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Urban Design Solutions for Protecting Pedestrians: Sweden's Self-De-Icing Tullhus Bridge Takes the Cake

By Rain Noe - March 12, 2013

in Architecture

In the quest to protect pedestrians from those mainstays of morning radio, Traffic and Weather, urban planners worldwide use a host of design solutions.

Tokyo likes elevated walkways at crossings, since pedestrians twenty feet off the ground cannot get hit by cars (assuming the Japanese government maintains their General Lee ban).

Minneapolis has an elevated Skyway system of footbridges, allowing building-to-building jaunts that avoid the brutal cold.

Snowy Montreal does the same with their "underground city" network of tunnels.

But an outdoor pedestrian/cyclist bridge in Norkopping, Sweden is our favorite. Although the Tullhus Bridge, designed by architecture firm Erik Andersson, is open-air, the surface is insulated and features built-in heating. In the dead of winter, cyclists can sail across it without worrying about ice; pedestrians get a brief respite from trudging through snow.

We'd love to see this in New York, but of course, it wouldn't work here as a walkway; once the temperature got down to a certain level, a heated footbridge would be lined with our homeless people lying down on it.

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christianius

11 years ago

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Interestingly, some pavements and streets in Reykjavik, Iceland are de-iced in a similar fashion. Hot water is piped through underground - only here the heat source is Iceland's enviable inexhaustable geothermal energy.
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bob

11 years ago

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I think heated toilet seats are excellent for people working from home (bathroom) eliminating the need for footpaths
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Nina Johansson

11 years ago

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Sorry to spoil the headline, but this bridge is not in Stockholm, it is in Norrkoping, a city 160 km southwest of Stockholm.
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Joel

11 years ago

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Curious how this is actually heated? What makes this more innovative than any other heated walkway or driveway across the world? Sure we're de-icing, but the amount of energy required to accomplish these things are typically extreme...
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