The demolishing of the Braiman Bridge linking parts of East Jeddah with West Jeddah has been delayed. Brig. Muhammad Al-Qahtani, director of Jeddah Traffic Department, said his office has objected to demolishing the bridge now because construction work would clash with the exam time of students and become a source of massive inconvenience. A source at the Ministry of Transportation said the ministry tried its best to persuade the Traffic Department to cooperate with the earlier decision as arrangements to start the structure teardown were already planned according to a fixed deadline. The project was scheduled to be completed within 10 months. However, Brig. Al-Qahtani denied that the postponement was due to differences between the two government agencies. “(The decision) was only to protect the students from the massive traffic logjam the raze work would cause. We know beforehand that the demolition of the bridge will badly affect the flow of traffic and lead to traffic jams and bottlenecks because the district is heavily populated. Moreover, the bridge is one of the busiest bridges, as it links East and West Jeddah. Just imagine the size of the stalled traffic,” Al-Qahtani said. The committee responsible for the implementation of the traffic flow plan said that all the entrances and exits of the bridge would be shut down in phases leaving no choice for motorists but to take longer routes to get to their destination.
