The Ivorian Prime Minister Gon Coulibaly launched on July 30 the works of the fourth bridge of Abidjan. An important infrastructure that will decongest the traffic to Yopougon, the most populated city of Abidjan with more than one million inhabitants.
The large commune of Yopougon, in the northern part of Abidjan, can push a sigh of relief. The construction of the 4th bridge to facilitate access to the rest of the city is finally launched. The book, which includes a set of road infrastructure, will open a new alternative to connect Yopougon to others in Abidjan. And beyond, it is the southern and northern areas of Abidjan and their economic centers (industrial areas on both sides) that will thus be connected more easily.
The only direct access road, a section of highway that dates from 1978, has indeed long since shown its limits, overwhelmed by a daily flow of “about 130 000 vehicles” with its bottling lot almost inevitable during rush hours, recalled Gon Coulibaly.
“Under the combined effect of population growth, strong growth in the car fleet and declining urban transport systems, the network of roads and traffic control has proved inadequate to ensure the flow of traffic. increasingly important, which leads to traffic congestion, road accidents, air pollution and the slowdown in economic activity, “said Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, Africa Director. from the west of the ADB.
A book of 142 billion FCFA
In fact, it is a larger work of 7.2 km total length that starts from Yopougon and will stretch into the towns of Attecoubé and Adjamé and open a new road. access to the Plateau and to the southern zone of Abidjan and especially to the port of Abidjan.
In the long term, the structure will present, on the Yopougon side, a 2 × 3-lane roadway (separated by a 20-meter central reservation reserved for the passage of line 2 of the Abidjan urban train to connect Yopougon and Bingerville), three interchanges on the main roads of the municipality crossed by the bridge and a toll platform giving access to the bridge itself.
At the Attécoubé section, the bridge will be built over 1.4 km of Banco Bay and will land via two ramps at the Sebroko junction. The work then stretches towards Adjamé as far as Boulevard Nangui Abrogoua, which it crosses via a hopper (a tunnel) to reach the Indénié crossroads.
According to estimates by the ADB, 70,000 vehicles will use the capital’s second toll bridge at a total cost of CFAF 142 billion, or € 216.5 million, financed by the institution and the Ivorian state.
A “modernization wind”
The book will therefore bring a breath of fresh air to the city of Abidjan, the 6th largest African city with 5 million inhabitants and which still concentrates 60% of Ivorian GDP, said Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade.
But the government intends to go much further in what Prime Minister Gon Coulibaly called “wind of modernization” that will blow on the economic capital. Indeed, the work of 4 interchanges, he announced, will be launched later this year. This is the Akwaba crossroads interchange, a major crossroads paving the way for the Félix Houphouët-Boigny International Airport, and three interchanges at Cocody, on Miterrand Boulevard (at the police school crossroads). , Riviera 3 and Palmeraie). Similarly, the project of “a bridge to Hauban” to connect the towns of Cocody and Plateau, will start this year.
These infrastructures are giving a boost to the emergence program of Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara whose Abidjan will be the showcase.
The contract of the 4th bridge, won by the Chinese construction giant CSCEC, following a call for tenders, should be executed over 30 months in principle. But the authorities have obtained from the firm a reduction of the deadline to 26 months, a delivery expected at the end of August 2020. A deadline that will fall right before the highly anticipated presidential October 2020.
