Employees and workers living east of Jeddah who head to their working places in the very west of the city every morning, need to find alternative routes for now, since the city's famous Tahlia street will soon have two more bridges. The Municipality of Jeddah has recently begun building three new bridges at a cost of more than SR60 million. The projects are planned to help ease the flow of traffic in the almost constantly congested city. According to Ahmed Ba-Nafi'a, general supervisor of projects at the municipality, there will be a bridge at the intersection between King Fahd street (more popularly known as Sitteen, or Sixty) and Quraish street. “Another bridge will be constructed to streamline traffic at the intersection of Prince Mohammad Bin Abdul Aziz Street (Tahlia) with Prince Mit'eb street (more commonly known as Sabaeen, or Seventy). He said the cost of this bridge will be around SR18 million. A third bridge will be built to help motorists using the intersection of Umm Al-Qura street with Prince Mohammad Bin Abdul Aziz street, at a cost of about SR23 million, he added. Ba-Nafi'a said that each road on those three bridges will be 515 meters long and 23 meters wide. He indicated that the three projects are of urgent priority, in which ready-made units will be used to practically assemble them rather than building them. The road on which these projects will be implemented are extremely vital to the city's traffic flow. The municipality has arranged with the Traffic Department to keep the roads in service while projects are taking place. “We have also taken into consideration not to block roads in these areas because of their importance to the city's traffic,” he said. Mohammed Al-Yami, director of Media Affairs at the municipality, said the projects were planned to help end Jeddah's traffic dilemma. “Continuing traffic jams on the city's main streets have become a defining trademark of the city,” he quipped, “so we hope that these projects would put an end to the situation.” He added that the three new projects are part of the municipality's 17-bridge and tunnel project that will be complete within two years. __
