6th October Bridge

6th October Bridge is an elevated highway in Cairo, Egypt, running through the city connecting part of the city to the highway to the Cairo International Airport, 20.5 km away. Its name commemorates the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

6th October Bridge has been called the "spinal cord" of Cairo, as half the population uses it on a daily basis. Due to its pivotal role in Cairo traffic, the bridge is always crowded, making the trip from one end to another take as long as 45 minutes.

The bridge was completed in 1996, construction taking no less than 30 years. It began with the modest, 130m-long phase 1, which merely connected the "smaller" branch of the Nile from Gezira to Agouza (and took from May 1969 to August 1972 to build), to the ninth phase, which completed the 20.5 km total length. It runs from the Agricultural Museum in Dokki to the Autostrade in Nasr City.

The building of the 6th October has been considered a national infrastructure project of epic proportions.

External links

* [http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1999/428/special.htm]
*Structurae [en] : 6th of October Bridge (1996) [http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/index.cfm?id=s0000879]