R9 in Charleroi, Belgium: one-way ring road

[Chris]

R9 is a motorway / freeway in Charleroi, Belgium. It's a 5 km / 3 mi one-way loop around the city center.

Charleroi is notorious for being one of the most impoverished cities in Western Europe, due to the collapse of the steel industry in the 1960s and subsequent persistently high unemployment rates in the 20-30% range. Crime and political corruption is also noted.

R9 was built in 1974-1975 to distribute traffic around the city center. I filmed R9 earlier this month. It's an interesting loop, with most of it elevated. Signage is very substandard though, even by Belgian standards.

[mgk920]

There is a similar one-way ring set up in a major Japanese city (Osaka?), too.

Mike

[Chris]

That would be Nagoya   

[webfil]

R9 is a motorway / freeway in Charleroi, Belgium. It's a 5 km / 3 mi one-way loop around the city center.

Charleroi is notorious for being one of the most impoverished cities in Western Europe, due to the collapse of the steel industry in the 1960s and subsequent persistently high unemployment rates in the 20-30% range. Crime and political corruption is also noted.

Thanks for this. I always found the little Charleroi to be "overbuilt" in terms of superinfrastructures; heavily-subsidized, low-cost oriented international airport, two ring roads with lots of expressways (and, judging by your video, nothing a grade-level thoroughfare wouldn't handle) and an white-elephant metro (40kpax/day) with many, many abandoned stations. Wallonie―Bruxelles seems to have a thing for concrete-and-steel dollars in this part of the nation.

Are the blacked-out signs backlit @0:40 and 3:10?
Were you waved at, or fingered by the Peugeot 107 driver @ 2:35? Anyways, that's... quite wallonic, to say the least.

[MaxConcrete]

Nice video. What is the canopy-style structure over the freeway under construction at 2:08?

[Chris]

It's a structure that they have used for an extensive bridge rehabilitation programme. I'm not sure what it is used for exactly (I've never seen such a structure in the Netherlands), but they have rehabilitated the bridge deck extensively, almost to the point that it is a complete deck replacement. This was the last phase of a 5 year rehabilitation that has cost € 26 million.

[DJStephens]

Kenny Loggins soundtrack??

[webfil]

It's a structure that they have used for an extensive bridge rehabilitation programme. I'm not sure what it is used for exactly (I've never seen such a structure in the Netherlands), but they have rehabilitated the bridge deck extensively, almost to the point that it is a complete deck replacement. This was the last phase of a 5 year rehabilitation that has cost € 26 million.

To me, it looks like a lattice truss structure where both walls and roof support the deck. We have many wooden examples in Québec.