32: Inhabited Bridges
What if every Auckland motorway bridge could in time become a Ponte Vecchio?
Ponte Vecchio, that famous bridge-as-building across the River Arno in Florence, is only the most famous example of the mash up inhabited bridge typology that was pretty standard in medieval Europe. Why just build a bridge for passage and movement when you can make use of that structure for much more besides?
It is fair to say inhabited bridges did not have a good time of it following the Renaissance, and events like the Great Fire of London made them somewhat antiquated and unfashionable. By the nineteenth century the formerly common sight of a bustling parade of shops and houses stacked up on either side of a narrow bridge thoroughfare had almost entirely disappeared.
Maybe now is the time for a comeback. And maybe Auckland could lead the way? After all, not many cities are as badly in need of urban bridging and repair to address severance by motorways.
Imagine if every motorway bridge in Auckland was able to be a continuation of the urban fabric to each side of it. Rather than just being a rudimentary, open and exposed concrete passage to keep people on local streets merely moving across the motorway, the general feeling could be hey, slow down and stay a while, or at least, nothing to worry about here, the city just continues across the motorway without you even noticing.
Constructing buildings along and above bridges to form a main street condition would address motorway severance in a holistic urban way, make walking and cycling much more enjoyable and safe as well as creating new commercial development opportunities.
A staged strategy could be the go. Every time we have to re-build a bridge, lets at least provide the structure to support more above, and maybe think about the gradient where flatter is better to support people and activities.
Bond Street seems a good place to start. A new main street linking Kingsland and Eden Park with Great North Road would go some way to bringing Kingsland more obviously into the readily walkable and cycle-able fold of the city centre fringe.
Stuart Houghton 2014
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there is an issue that the buildings couldn’t have windows which could open or outside decks due to the risk of dropping debris onto the motorway … unless of course you also build a cover extending out over the motorway which could be used to create open space for any buildings on the bridge. All the buildings would also have to be constructed to a very high earthquake standard. The overall cost of this would seem prohibitively expensive.
> there is an issue that the buildings couldn’t have windows which could open or outside decks due to the risk of dropping debris onto the motorway …
Why would we suddenly need to start doing that? If you want to drop something on a motorway right now, you can easily just drop it off the side of an overbridge like Bond Street. They’ve got pretty basic 1-metre-high railings.
Also, for everywhere that isn’t a motorway, we don’t forbid having decks or windows that can open, despite it being entirely possible to drop things on the footpath or roadway.
Speed of vehicles, intensity of use, height above carriageway all relevant issues which increase risk profile in terms of likelihood and consequence of accidents and differentiate a motorway from a standard street. You’ll also notice all the cages on south auckland over bridges due to the mid-2000s fatality from the concrete block lobbed over.
I’m not saying it can’t be done, just think a bit if realism needs to be brought to bear on the matter.
Realism. What you mean think like a highway engineer? It’s just a m’way, not a relic of the true cross. Build as I outline and there’d be way less possibility of anything falling on the road below than there is currently.
“It’s just a m’way, not a relic of the true cross” – Fine line I think for most traffic engineers.
I disagree. Lightweight cantilever structure, non opening thermally + acoustically efficient glazing. Prefabricated and installed quickly to keep NZTA from having kittens.
Boom! I’ve always thought it’d be great to sit at a long bar on the K’Rd overbridge watching the poor commuters stuck in their little tin prisons below, sipping a whiskey sour, as the sun goes down over the Waitakeres… Eventually the scene turns into a light show too; not bad.
So not a great distance out just enough for one long bar at the window, I reckon it would be popular for a swift one on the way home, or as a place to get that early morning caffeine hit on the way to the K’Rd station… [Ponsonby’s Station after all.] Not unlike many a bar I’ve sat at in Airports; just a better view, frankly.
Shall we crowd source the funding? What should we call it: ‘One for the Road’?
I can talk sweetly to NZTA…..
Patrick, NZTA won’t have a bar of it…
But seriously, I like it. This sort of idea was proposed and considered in the consultation and drafting of the K’Rd plan. Too expensive, too unrealistic, etc. But at least the problem statement was recognised (i.e. the unrealised potential of the overbridge).
Fantastic idea, that could be further developed. So far this is the top idea to come out of this series of posts. The cost of xtra structure for the bridge would be more than offset by the value of the xtra buildings and the multiple use of the land,which wouldnt have been used anyway. I think the bridges could be much wider than the sketch to maximise residential and commercial use either side of the road . There will be minimal impact below on the motorway and it would become more like a tunnel. The xtra space could allow buffer spaces of landscaping and outdoor areas as well as some pretty cool enclosed viewing platforms looking up and down the motorway which are usually well vegetated either side..
Excellent idea. Start by removing all the crap from the K Rd overbridge. The bus passengers could then shelter under the awnings of the new shops built on it.
To be fair K rd has been doing this already for 30 odd years. The Saturday markets with everything laid out on the footpath under the old awnings was great.
Until…
Why not make it like the bridges of Edinburgh? The south bridge doesn’t even seem like a bridge till you look down what seems like an ally and it turns out to be 4 stories up. They also used to rent the space in the vaults beneath for storage (because the buildings rose up to the bridge level they were sealed in). It would be similar to the ground level tricks between queen street and high street or the terrace and lambton quay.
Would anyone want to live in a constant state of toxic atmosphere, likely reducing their lifespan significantly? Not to mention the noise!
I’m sure that is exactly what they said about the Ponte Vecchio, who wants to live over a noisy polluted sewer full of freight traffic?
Most Florentines avoid the Ponte Vecchio by walking across Ponte Santa Trinita, or bussing. I followed suit while living there. The tourist trap shops obscure most of the views so it’s not the nicest way to get across. Bear in mind the PV bridges the gap between two parts of the city, the side with Il Duomo and Uffizi Gallery, to the Pitti Palace, Boboli Gardens, and Piazzale Michaelangelo, with historic features along every step of the way. Auckland probably does not have the visitor and/or resident population to sustain this. Some weekend markets may work, however.
Geoff,
It is not unlike development that occurs abundantly on the flanks of motorways. At best, you make a salient argument against motorways in general — very well.
Fumes rise up, more than out. Living directly above motorway lanes would be a hazard to your health much more than living next to one, which itself is already unhealthy.
I doubt there would be any takers. None who care about their health anyway.
Perhaps you missed the bit about non-opening windows? Anyway I wouldn’t proposing housing on these crossings anyway.
And yes, you’re quite right, aren’t motorways vile?
Closing the windows won’t make any difference, unless you mean sealing the environment and pumping in fresh air through a pipeline from a distant location.
Perhaps you’ve heard of aircon?
Cooling the air or removing humidity won’t make it less toxic. You need special equipment to remove vehicle emission toxins.
Sure, you could do it. But why would you? Put a garden there instead.
Within 500 metres:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/jan/26/pollution.transportintheuk
Just imagine living with 10 metres, and directly above, which is where most fumes go. You’d be dead within 20 years…..
“But the new study provides strong evidence that car emissions stunt crucial lung development in children between the ages of 10 and 18. The researchers suggest that diesel fumes are to blame. They studied 3,677 children in 12 areas of southern California where a wide range of air qualities was recorded.”
Blaming diesel fumes from car emissions in an area with virtually no diesel cars? A serious error by either the reporter or researchers.
Either way, we lock adults in office buildings overlooking motorways every day, and our top high school virtually sits on top of spaghetti junction. And the worst place for exposure to diesel pollution is inside a motor vehicle – car bus or train.
Does Auckland Council measure pollution above the motorway anywhere? iirc they monitor a number of arterial roads and Khyber Pass had the highest readings.
Excellent proposal Patrick, I thoroughly agree. We had a look at a similar situation in Wellington a few years ago, and looked back at some examples from history that you might care to have a gander at: http://eyeofthefish.org/Inhabited-bridges/
I fairly sure the National government already has a policy to increase the number of people living under bridges by 2017.