Neherkade

The Hague is like many other cities: it faces increasingly dense traffic. Until 2015, the Neherkade and its three bridges were a traffic blackspot. This particularly affected the central bridge, where motor vehicles had to stop to let trams cross. The situation was detrimental to both traffic flow and air quality. BESIX proposed a solution and implemented this with its partners: to widen the Neherkade and divert some of the road traffic through an underpass.

Additional lanes were created for motor vehicles, which ran underground, including a 160 m tunnel. BESIX and partners also adapted the crossroads and renovated the tram track, the street lighting, drains and all the traffic management technology infrastructure. The works were scheduled over two years, condensing the operations that disrupted traffic most into two weekends. This proved a pleasant surprise for the local authority, which had expected seven weeks of traffic disruption.

One of the most spectacular undertakings during these works was the installation, in a single day, of a 40 m long, 20 m wide tunnel section under the carriageway. This mammoth 2,400-tonne tunnel had been pre-assembled nearby. The technique used, akin to Lean Planning – where the different operations are linked together wherever possible – kept inconvenience for third parties to a bare minimum, and meant the works were completed more quickly.