The most necessary pedestrian bridge near me has what look like metal gutters running up and down the stairs. In fact they mean when you dismount a bicycle it becomes fairly easy to go up and down the stairs pushing your bicycle.
The at-grade crossing there is closed for up to 40 minutes per hour, because the railway carries both freight (to/ from a major port) and passenger trains. If you're in a vehicle too bad, "Long Queue. Turn Engines Off" as the signs say but if you're on foot the bridge means you don't need to care too much about that.
You might be wondering: Why isn't there a road bridge? It's an industrial estate, so any road bridge needs to carry large goods vehicles, articulated trucks and so on, which means a fairly large concrete structure with up and down ramps occupying a large footprint and there's nowhere to put that. It's also next to a tidal river, dig down and it'll flood, further into the city they just tunnelled the entire railway under the park, but that is not cheap.
I feel like a lot of people are commenting without much context. These bridges are for legal footpaths. They’re usually in the countryside. The paths aren’t maintained they’re just a legal right of way through the countryside and they have a legal obligation to put a bridge so as to not obstruct it for people on foot. It’s not like a trail as in the US. The paths aren’t even remotely wheelchair accessible for miles either way they’re usually mud. You would have to climb over stys to get to the bridge. The bridge would be the least of your problems.
And the point of this is to be able to close high-risk at-grade crossings of the line, especially those with relatively poor sight lines or where the necessity to maintain sufficient sight lines is an impediment to increasing the line speed.
It wouldn't matter. In (most of?) the US, anything you so must meet all the latest code, so if you aren't rich you line in a tent (I'm exaggerating slightly, but you are forbidden from a building a 1970s car, house, etc)
The US ADA requires reasonable accomidation, which is wishy washy, but lots of new construction nature paths in hilly terrain just have steps, because there's no room for a ramp and an elevator would be unreasonable.
Even new construction train stations don't always get an elevator to go over or under the line to the other platform... although they do get a long ramp and a ramp on the platform to load if the car floors are above the platform.
If these crossings are really in the middle of nowhere along muddy footpaths, I think you could get away with no ramp in the US, too.
If the government built a train station on the middle of the trail, then they would literally be required to build ADA-compliant ramps down to the mud.
I understand your feelings but engineering is an iterative process, what they created here was a prototype with 3 goals:
- Lower cost
- Quicker install time
- Aesthetics
Now the team can go back with the lessons they learned and modify the design.
One thing I noticed upon a second reading is how much they were emphasizing the remote monitoring capabilities.
>is that the bridge will feature built-in monitoring to monitor usage and maintenance needs.
The cynic in me reads this as yet another step in cutting staff for inspection but it may possible that they are planning on deploying this style bridge to more rural locations where there may be unofficial crossings of hiking trails.
The previous comment was about not handling bicycles in the Netherlands. For the Netherlands it's important that it handles bicycles properly, by being able to cycle. Pushing a bike or getting off isn't an acceptable solution (for NL).
Though doubt making it less steep and longer would really be an issue.
That seems quite reasonable for the NL. At least for myself, here in the States, I'd be happy to push my bike for a few feet rather than have to go miles out of my way or ride on a super busy street to cross a railroad. Of course, if we still had railroads in the US. But crossing busy roads is an issue here.
Why would you expect to be able to bicycle over a footbridge? They follow footpaths. You shouldn’t be cycling on a footpath. They’re for people on foot. It’s not a bridleway or cycle path. Clue is in the names!
In the UK a "footpath" is a legal right of way for people on foot. It's often muddy, goes through fields with animals, and there usually are many gates or stiles [0] you need to cross. You probably could cycle over parts of it, but some of the footpaths near where I grew up are even hard to walk as the hedges between fields are often overgrown. You only have the right to walk along a footpath, any other use - including cycling - without the land owners pernission is considered trespass.
Often they are hundreds of years old, so any new construction needs to allow the public to cross over them. When I was growing up, one of my neighbours did a lot of research into footpaths in the area, and uncovered a lot of forgotten footpaths. Some of them even went through people's back gardens, and as they were legal rights of way, they had no choice but to open them up (apparently there's a way to move them now for cases like this now).
I think you're possibly missing a whole lot of cultural context.
These bridges are needed because a legally mandated footpath crosses a railway line. That's why so they're lightweight - because they're often very rarely used - they're there mainly for legal compliance.
You can't cycle on these kinds of footpath - both legally but also literally because they're usually just mud and across agricultural fields and you would have to cross stiles. You couldn't cycle to them even if you wanted to.
So no there is no cyclebridge, because nobody would be trying to cycle over them.
First you berate someone for talking about bicycles because "footbridge" is in the name, then you ask how people would get to "this bridge", which makes no sense because there was no specific bridge in the first place, then when asked what bridge you are talking about you jump to "cultural context".
> which makes no sense because there was no specific bridge in the first place
The context is that nobody would want to bicycle over these bridges in general because where these bridges are generally used it is not legally or physically possible to get to them on bicycle.
The point therefore is your question doesn't make any sense if you know the context.
Look at the other comments saying the same thing as me if you want another perspective to help you understand if you're struggling.
