Spectacular STEELBLOC® Premiere in the Øresund Strait:
KIRCHDORFER steel guardrails connect Denmark and Sweden

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With the “STEELBLOC® PRODIGY” series, the Kirchdorfer Road & Traffic division presented a revolutionary steel guardrail concept last year. The spectacular premiere of the future-oriented vehicle restraint system has now been realized on an artificial island in the Baltic Sea.

Decades of experience and the worldwide success of the DELTABLOC® concrete safety barriers have prompted KIRCHDORFER Road & Traffic to complete the vision of a “seamless security system” by developing a corresponding steel guardrail system. The solution developed according to the concept of “super modularity” is based on the use of a single post type with a uniform driving depth. Depending on the distance between the posts, the system, which has been crash-tested in accordance with EN 1317, achieves outstanding performance indicators in different containment levels. The maximally reduced complexity of installing and maintaining the STEELBLOC® PRODIGY 7.20s steel guardrails was also the convincing decision criterion for the Swedish company NRS (Nordic Road Safety) when choosing a system for securing a 3 km long section of road on the island of Peberholm, the transition from the Øresund Bridge to the Øresund Tunnel in the strait between Denmark and Sweden.

Austrian steel guardrails on the futuristic “Pepper Island” Peberholm

Peberholm – named in allusion to the neighboring Saltholm (“little salt island”) – is an approx. 4 km long island in the Øresund Strait, artificially created with the excavation of the bridge and tunnel connection that was opened in 2000 between the Danish capital Copenhagen and the Swedish Malmö. The spectacular shape of the artificial island minimizes the influence on the ocean currents and forms the transition between the 8 km long Øresund Bridge, on which road and train traffic are carried on superimposed levels, and the adjoining tunnel. The artificial island has been under nature protection since it opened, as it also represents an exciting biological experiment: over the past 20 years, more than 500 different species have settled there without human intervention. Therefore, access to the island away from the road and rail connection is only permitted to biologists who document newly settled species once a year.

Since the summer of 2020, the scientists have been able to examine a unique and revolutionary species of the family of steel guardrails, which are widespread around the world: STEELBOC® PRODIGY – the new “child prodigy” that has not only settled permanently on Peberholm, but will also soon be found on roads around the world.

Product information:
www.steelbloc.com