bridge project to link Egypt and Saudi Arabia

[Stephane Dumas]

article from http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,775020,00.html

Egypt and Saudi Arabia hope to construct a giant bridge spanning the Gulf of Aqaba for road and rail traffic. Officials at Egypt's Ministry of Transportation have confirmed to SPIEGEL that the project, under discussion since 1988, has finally been approved. Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has reportedly put General Abdul Aziz, the chairman of the Arab Road Association, in charge of overseeing the project's implementation.

The Gulf of Aqaba runs along the eastern edge of the Sinai Peninsula. Plans call for the 32-kilometer (20-mile) bridge to cross the narrow Strait of Tiran from Ras Nasrani, near the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, to Ras Hamid in northwestern Saudi Arabia. Parts of the bridge would be suspended.

[Quillz]

Will the non-suspended portions likely be a causeway?

[Brandon]

20 miles is quite a distance over deep water, which, IIRC, the Red Sea is at that point.  I would suspect that both Israel and Jordan might want a say in the bridge since they do have shipping interests that go through those straits.

[Bickendan]

If they simply parted the Red Sea, they wouldn't need a bridge...

[Scott5114]

Something's not right here. The article says that the bridge will cross the Gulf of Aqaba in one place, then later says the bridge will cross the Straits of Tiran, which is only 8 miles wide. Wikipedia seems to indicate the bridge will end up passing through the island of Tiran as well, so maybe hitting Tiran en route to Saudi Arabia accounts for the 20 mi distance.

[1995hoo]

Whichever way, presumably the reason for this is that any road traffic without a bridge would have to pass through Israel, which has a sliver of land bordering the Gulf of Aqaba on the northern end.