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The Netherlands' amazing floating roundabout

25 Nov 2013 design Netherlands
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We swoon in gratitude whenever a new cycle bridge opens across a river, or a roundabout is built with a barely adequate cycle lane. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, they don’t do things by halves.

Visual News brings the stunning Hovenring to our attention, a ‘floating cycle roundabout’ above a busy road junction in Eindhoven. While drivers wait below at a traffic light-controlled crossroads, cyclists can flow freely around the ring above. But this doesn’t mean there’s a taxing climb up to the roundabout level; instead, the road beneath has been lowered so that cyclists needn’t stray far from the level. The bridge is suspended from an elegant thin central tower. 

Eindhoven is known as the ‘City of Light’, not least because Philips is based in the city. There’s LED lighting all the way around the deck, so that cyclists can safely navigate the roundabout.

Best of all, though, is the lighting underneath the bridge deck, giving it the look of a flying saucer. To quote Apple’s Steve Jobs out of context: “It looks like it's from another planet, a good planet. A planet with better designers.”

See more at the official Hovenring website.

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