Construction on what would become the world's longest marine causeway, connecting Qatar and Bahrain, is due to begin next year, and what a project it is: We're talking about a bridge more than 13 miles long, costing around $3 billion.


Somewhat adorably named the Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Causeway, this massive bridge is expected to take around 4.5 years to complete and cost somewhere between $2.3 and $3 billion, but should be a great help for travel between Qatar and Bahrain. The trip currently takes more than four hours and will be reduced to 30 minutes on the bridge, and those in charge expect 10,000 to 20,000 vehicles per day to use it.


For a sense of scale, here's a chart that compares the bridge to other very large things. Of course, I need a scale chart to tell how big a blue whale is, which sort of defeats the purpose of measuring this bridge in blue whales, but still: This is one large bridge. [Mena Infrastructure via Reddit]