Padma Setu or Padma Multipurpose Bridge is a multipurpose road and rail bridge built over the Padma River in Bangladesh. Through this, Shariatpur and Madaripur districts have been connected with Lauhjong of Munshiganj. The bridge was inaugurated on 25 June 2022. On this day, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, personally climbed the Padma Bridge for the first time by paying the toll through the Mawa end and thereby the bridge was opened. The construction of Padma Bridge is considered to be the most challenging construction project in the history of Bangladesh. The two-story steel and concrete truss bridge has a four-lane carriageway on the upper level and a single rail track on the lower level.
The bridge spans the Padma-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basin and consists of 41 spans, each span 150.12 meters (492.5 ft) long and 22.5 meters (74 ft) wide. The total length of the bridge is 6.15 km (3.82 mi). It is the longest bridge in Bangladesh, the longest bridge over the Ganges in terms of both number of spans and total length, and the deepest piled bridge in the world with a depth of 120 meters (390 ft). Bangladesh’s GDP is expected to increase by 1.2 percent after the bridge is operational.
