Nizar Baraka, Morocco’s Minister of Equipment and Water, on Sunday launched the construction of Morocco’s soon to be the largest and longest road bridge, a viaduct that will cross the Sakia El Hamra river expanding the existing Laayoune bypass for 1.38 Bln MAD.
At more than 1.6 kilometers long and 21.4 meters wide, this mega-bridge will have two separate highways, each with two lanes and a walkway for pedestrians, designed to be in accordance with Morocco’s safety and environmental sustainability requirements.
This large-scale project is expected to take 40 months to build and will improve road infrastructure and traffic movement to and from the southern provinces.
Bypassing the city of Laayoune via this massive structure above River Sakia El Hamra, traffic will no longer be cut off by flooding, thus improving road safety and the city’s environmental issues.
In a statement to the press, Baraka touted the viaduct over the river as the largest in Morocco, and asserted that it will improve road safety and access for road users.
The new Tiznit-Dakhla expressway, a construction project that stretches over 1,055 km at an expected cost of around ten Bln MAD, is also part of the new development model for the Kingdom’s southern provinces. It is key to the economic and social development of the Kingdom’s southern provinces and will encourage investment in the southern regions, according to the Minister. It is more than 97% completed, with 980 km of expressway and 15 major engineering structures already open to traffic.
The Tiznit-Guelmim highway, another part of Morocco’s southern mega-project, is about 87% completed and extends over 114 km for 2 Blln MAD.
Work on the 441 km Guelmim-Laayoune trunk road, has been completed at a cost of six billion MAD, and the road was recently opened to traffic. Work on the 500 km Laayoune-Dakhla trunk road, requiring an overall investment of one Bln MAD, was completed two years ago.