A note on Baghdad's Bridges

There are two major waterways in the city. The first is the Tigris River which until this morning was spanned by thirteen bridges within the city limits, and the second water way is the Army Canal that is spanned by four bridges. The Army Canal goes through Eastern Baghdad and demarcates the western boundary of Sadr City. The seventeen water barrier crossings are not that many for a city of six million people. As an example, Pittsburgh, PA with a population of 325,000 people has fourteen major river crossings for automobile traffic only and at least three rail crossings. So this means Baghdad's bridges are heavily used.

The Tigris River bridges are concentrated near the Green Zone in the central section of the city, and then more intermittendly dispersed both north and south of the Green Zone. They are the primary access points to the rapidly self-segragating through ethnic cleansing mixed neighborhoods and local conflict zones. The Army Canal bridges seperate Shi'ite dominated neighrborhoods from other Shi'ite dominated neighborhoods.

All of these bridges are natural chokepoints within the city. Iraq Slogger in the above link notes that the security operations going on in Baghdad have narrowed these chokepoints and thus limited the flow of people and traffic. These limitations are intentional but they also keep Baghdad from fully functioning as a modern city.

The destruction of one of the Tigris River bridges means that the security restrictions and precautions around the remaining twelve bridges will increase, thus constricting cross-river traffic even more, and creating larger crowds waiting to get across.