18.059.01 | Bicycle and footbridge

The adaptation of the river profile of the Lys at Menin, at the French border, is an opportunity for a fundamental and large-scale transformation of the city centre. Promenades along the Lys, new public spaces, and the bridges (roadbridge and bicycle and pedestrian bridge) have been thought as coherent over all masterplan by the design team Omgeving-SBE-Ney & Partners.

The bicycle and pedestrian bridge develops in an S-curve from one bank to the other: a slender box girder resting on a series of steel columns with variable inclination. From this point of view, it can be associated with the inclined leg bridge typology. The steel bridge deck has a variable height as a function of the necessary inertia. The piers are thick-walled steel tubes which are moment-fixed in the steel bridge deck at the top and in the reinforced concrete foundation slab at the foot. The integral bridge ends on reinforced concrete abutments, whose brick cladding is inspired by the old city walls of the fortifications of Menin.