Hasta La Ideas

Resurfacing a highway requires shutting down lanes, and this creates disruption. The Swiss don’t like disruptions. Thus the Swiss Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) hired Marti Technik AG, a construction firm that specializes in cutting-edge technology and special equipment, to design and build a solution.

Marti Technik’s answer is this incredible Astra Bridge. Its modular components are trucked to site and assembled, creating an elevated roadway that allows workers to resurface 100 meters of roadway at a time while traffic flows overhead, unimpeded. Everything from how the components are unloaded, to how they’re positioned into place and connected, has been thought out in mind-boggling detail:

It’s been in service for two years now. Here’s footage of it in current use on the A1 highway:

“While work is being done under the bridge,” FEDRO writes, “traffic above is moving in two lanes at 60 km/h.”