Italian contractor Itinera will build the new 99m-long and 31m-wide Skurusunds Bridge near Stockholm in Sweden.
Trafikverket, the Swedish transport administration, awarded the €75 million contract to Itinera, part of Gruppo Gavio.
The new bridge will be parallel to the existing bridge which will remain. It handles around 52,000 vehicles daily, many of them commuting to and from Stockholm. Work will include improvements to traffic junctions at Skuru and Björknäs.
The four-lane steel bridge will have an orthotropic deck of five spans and be part of a larger 317m-long motorway project at the site across the Skurusund in the municipality of Nacka, east of Stockholm.
The new bridge’s five spans will include a single 99m span with two side spans on the eastern side (68.4m and 45.1m) and two side spans on the western side (63.5m and 41m).
Architect DISSING+WEITLING, as the engineering design consultant, says that the new bridge is “simple yet technically advanced”, without towers, cables or viewing platforms. The bridge has a slender, aerodynamic steel deck “and it is made as transparent as possible by…. aligning the piers of the new bridge with those of the existing bridge”. The effect is “a connection between the two structures, and the new bridge will not block the view of the old”.
Other engineers for the bridge are WSP Sweden as planning consultant while ELU Konsult and Leonhardt Andra and Partners are acting as the project’s civil engineer. Completion is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2021 when renovation and rebuilding of the existing bridge will start and likely finish in 2023.
The existing 284m-long Skuru Bridge is, in fact, two bridges side by side. Together they have a 32m vertical clearance and a span of 78m. According to Trafikverket, the oldest (southern) bridge is one of the first concrete arched bridges in Sweden. It was designed and constructed by AB Arcus with Lars Isak Wahlman as consulting architect between 1913-1915.
The northern bridge was constructed between 1953-57 when the original bridge was extensively remodelled. Although half of the secondary columns were removed, the essential form and aesthetical awareness of the original bridge was maintained.
