Work has started on the Msikaba Bridge deck, and it took three trucks to transport the first steel-bridge deck segment in three sections from Middelburg in Mpumalanga, and three to five hours to offload each segment at the bridge near Lusikisiki.
The 580m Msikaba Bridge will cross the 195m deep Msikaba river gorge and once completed, will be the longest span cable-stayed suspension bridge in South Africa and the second longest in Africa after the 680m Maputo-Catembe Bridge in Mozambique. The anticipated completion date is the end of 2024, according to the South African National Roads Agency SOC Limited (SANRAL).
The bridge located approximately 23km east of Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape, forms part of the backbone of the greenfields portion of the N2 Wild Coast Road project (N2WCR) – a national priority under the coordination and direction of the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission (PICC) and one of government’s 18 Strategic Integrated Projects (SIPs) to support economic development and address service delivery in the poorest provinces.
The bridge deck is the part of the bridge that will hang out over the gorge that traffic will drive on, to cross from one side to the other.
