The causeway from the Saudi Arabian side.
On 8 July 1981, Mohammed Aba Al-Khail, minister for Finance and National Economy of Saudi Arabia and Yousuf Ahmed Al-Shirawi, minister of Industrial Development in Bahrain signed an agreement to start construction on the maritime causeway.[3]
On 11 November 1982, King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz and Sheikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa unveiled the curtain on the Memorial Plaque during a formal ceremony attended by leaders of the GCC states marking the beginning of the project.[3]
On 11 April 1985, Shaikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, the Prime Minister of Bahrain, pressed the button to install the final part of the box bridges thereby finally linking the Saudi mainland with Bahrain.[3]
On 26 November 1986, the causeway was officially inaugurated in the presence of King Fahd and Shaikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa, with the latter consenting to naming the bridge King Fahd Causeway.[3]
As of 2010, an estimated 25,104 vehicles use the causeway daily. The 2010 total number of travelers across the causeway from both countries was 19.1 million passengers, or an average of 52,450 passengers per day.[7]
The Saudi–led intervention in Bahrain, which used the causeway to cross over into Bahrain with 150 vehicles, began on 14 March 2011 to assist the Bahraini government in suppressing an anti-government uprising in the country. The intervention came three weeks after the U.S. pressured Bahrain to withdraw its military forces from the streets.[8] As a decision by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the intervention included sending 1,000 (1,200)[9] troops with vehicles from Saudi Arabia[8] at the invitation of the Al-Khalifa ruling family.[9][10]
History from : Wikipedia
