A bridge that is more than just a passage

You are now standing on Södra Lasarettsvägen, and if you look out over the river, you’ll see Karlgårdsbron coming into view.

One of the most important pieces of the puzzle in Skellefteå’s transformation is creating natural flows that reduce car traffic through the city center. All to make room for people, encounters, and city life. Here at Karlgårdsbron, you can see how that ambition is taking physical shape.

The 400-meter-long wooden bridge connects Skellefteå’s northern and southern parts in a unifying gesture and creates another safe link across the river. It also contributes to a positive change in the city’s overall traffic network. When traffic is rerouted, pressure on the city center is reduced, making room instead for life and activity.

Together with Parkbron a short distance away, Karlsgårdsbron creates a cohesive and even more attractive route for pedestrians and cyclists. The new bridge will feature a completely separate section for pedestrians and cyclists, which safely and seamlessly connects to existing routes for walking and cycling. In addition, Karlsgårdsbron, just like Parkbron, will have balcony-like landings where you can stop, perhaps reflect for a moment, and look out over both the river and the city.

But the Karlsgårdsbron does more than just reroute traffic. It creates more alternative routes, making the city more resilient and less vulnerable to disruptions. At the same time, it improves accessibility for both public transit and essential services. And as the traffic flow on central streets decreases, they can be gradually transformed—with calmer routes and places to gather. Simply put, a city that is not just passed through, but experienced.

In other words, Karlgårdsbron is more than just a crossing over the river. It changes how we view the concept of a city, where roads direct traffic properly, so that life can take place where it belongs.

The bridge is being built using approximately 4, 200 cubic meters of northern Swedish wood and 600 tons of steel, and will be painted in its characteristic red color, Falu red (NCS S 5040-Y70R).

The load-bearing wooden trusses, known as kingposts, are made from glulam beams that are up to 1.2 meters high and 24 meters long, weighing 12–14 tons each. The trusses are assembled on site after the bridge deck has been launched across the river.

On the Skellefteå växer website, you can read more about Karlgårdsbron