After the official opening of the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah Causeway, we decided to go on a bridge ride to take a look at one of the largest infrastructure projects built in the GCC region, if not the world. The bridge covers a distance of around 37.5 kilometers, and its aim is to shorten the amount of time it takes heading to Subiya from Kuwait City, which usually takes around 90 minutes but now is shortened to around 30 minutes. There’s also the notion that the causeway marks the start of developing projects like a free economic zone and port and the islands to boost trade and tourism.
Once the bridge became accessible to the public, almost everyone in Kuwait was there to take a closer look at what we’ve been seeing only from afar. It was the weekend after the opening, and trust us when we say that it was packed!
The bridge suddenly became something of a tourist attraction for locals. People from right and left were parked just to snap photos of the impeccable city views, but were eventually moved for several safety reasons.
From our point of view, it is a worthy car ride, therapeutic even. Once you enter the bridge, which we took from the Shuwaikh Port area on the south side, the skyline of K-town was vibrant and alive. The view of the sea alone with the reflection of the sky was beautiful to look at, and the more we continued straight ahead, the city began to fade away, leaving us in the middle of the sea.
The causeway includes more than one link, but the important link is the one leading to Silk City, which is considered to become a key hub for the country’s future financial and commercial sectors. According to KUNA, during the inauguration of Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah Causeway, Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon of South Korea said “The project uses the latest methods of civil engineering and environmentally-friendly technologies,” which is certainly a step forward, until we saw the viral videos of locals throwing trash from the bridge in the sea.
Sheikh Jaber’s Causeway is certainly an infrastructure project to be proud of. The goal is to connect out of reach areas, making them closer to the city and more accessible to us. A random ride is fun in and of itself, even if we don’t end up reaching the final destination of the bridge and simply U-turn.
The fact that the causeway was built using environmentally-friendly technology should inspire us to preserve its integrity, along with the ground it was built on, and the environment it is surrounded by.
We also decided that it was probably a bad idea to have gone over the weekend for a ride on the bridge because of how crowded it was. But, we managed to go on a second ride, not during sunset, but at night for a different outlook of the causeway and there were only a handful of cars around.
But the shocking part is there weren’t just cars, but cyclists casually cycling on the bridge! Shoutout to all of them for putting on such an effort, it is a long bridge after all. If you end up taking a ride on the bridge and catch a couple of cyclists on the side, give them a honk of appreciation and enjoy your long cruise.
Follow us on Instagram @bazaargram to catch our next ride.
