The construction of the South Bridge began in 1983 before the appearance of the Kharkovsky and Poznyaki residential areas. The main purpose of the construction of the South Bridge was to connect the central part of Kyiv with the left bank areas, as well as to create the shortest and most convenient way to the Boryspil airport. The beginning of the South Bridge is considered to be a three-level junction at Vydubychi, then a road overpass 1250 meters long goes to the Dnieper itself, and the last, and also the most difficult part in execution, is the bridge itself over the river, 1256 meters long.
The bridge is made combined for the movement of cars and metro trains, and pipes of a heating main and water supply of large diameters are also laid on it. In addition to all this, cable communications are located in the span structures of the bridge. In sum, all this created a load on the structures, which is comparable to 20 lanes of filled cars and added problems to the designers. In order to provide the necessary clearance for the passage of vessels under the bridge, the main span, together with the steel part, is almost 300 meters long, suspended on cables. The main part of the span suspension is a 135-meter pylon in which the guys are fixed. Fences are mounted on the upper lintel of the pylon, and the lintel itself is a bridge between the two “legs” of the pylon. At the top of the “legs” there are small rooms where winches and other equipment for servicing the cables are located. Flights of stairs are installed from the outside of the pylon. The shrouds for the South Bridge were manufactured at the rope factory in Volgograd, and the work was carried out on equipment that was already 60 years old at that time. This imposed some restrictions on the finished product, so the workers employed on the construction of the bridge had to modify the ropes for about a year.
On December 25, 1990, the South Bridge was opened to traffic. For various reasons, the timing of the start of automobile traffic and metro trains turned out to be inconsistent and the metro line across the bridge was launched only 2 years later – on December 30, 1992. The passage of subway cars under the shrouds is hidden by a steel canopy. This is done to avoid damage to passing trains by falling icicles that form on the ropes in the winter season. The author of the project and the chief engineer of the bridge is Georgy Fuks, who also designed Northern Bridge, metro bridge, Rusanovsky metro bridge and Podolsk bridge crossing. At that time, the bridge was considered the most modern bridge in Ukraine; 112 million rubles (about $200 million) were spent on its construction.