Cairo Ring Road

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The Cairo Ring Road is Egypt's most famous beltway. It is made up of a subset of the freeways that circle the city of Cairo, Egypt and services the Greater Cairo Region. Construction on the Ring Road began in the late 1980s. Today, the Cairo Ring Road is a sort of circular road, but it’s not a closed circular road, as its south-western section remains unbuilt, as route of the highway would take it very near the Giza pyramids - an area which has been on UNESCO's World Heritage List since 1979.

The total length of the ring road is about 110 km with more than 50% on desert land, 15% on urbanised area, and 35% on arable land. The highway is eight-lanes across. The total budget for the project was 3 billion Egyptian pounds.

The study of the long-range master scheme of the Greater Cairo region in Egypt led to the implementation of a ring road around the Greater Cairo agglomeration, able to contribute rapidly and significantly to a number of main urban development goals: First, to reduce private car traffic inside the existing agglomeration (mainly the through traffic) by connecting the entrances of the urban region; Second to support the process of urban de-concentration; and finally to protect agricultural areas from urban encroachment.

As a result of the road not being a closed circular road, there is a project underway to close the circle. This project has started and the UNESCO has refused that the southern part of that major road passes by the Pyramids as it is an internationally protected area. So the project had moved the closing of the road on top of the Marioteya waterway. Construction has started and is expected to be completed in 2009.