Considering the convenience of the large number of visitors moving around at the 2017 Taiwan Lantern Festival, approximately 2 million people daily, the county government constructed seven temporary “pedestrian-only” steel framed bridges across the fields of the festival. Upon closure of the festival a deconstruction operation commenced in the next two days, with the steel rentals returned and concrete blocks sold off, such as to avoid accidents caused by vehicle safety concerns.
The director of the Water Resource Department, Xu Hongbo, pointed out that the construction of the steel bridges have economic, safety, and time characteristics to consider:
1.Economy: renting the steel frames and constructing the bridges, dismantling the frame at the end of the festival, total cost of the seven bridges is approximately 2 million NTD, not making inefficient permanent bridges.
2.Security: Requested professional technicians to calculate the load requirement (only allow for pedestrians, not vehicles), the design of a safe temporary steel bridge using steel beams, steel layers, followed by 3 simple layers of concrete to finish off the structure.
3.Time Constraint: Normal bridge operations includes administrative applications, examining procedures, and including the construction of the actual bridge, would take more than six months to be completed. Instead, constructing temporary steel bridges compresses the process down to one month.
Director Xu Hongbo said, the construction of the seven bridges is designed to help control the flow of the anticipated large crowds at the Lantern Festival by dispersing the crowds across the grounds effectively. At the end of the Lantern Festival the objective of the temporary bridges will be accomplished. Upon completion, the bridges are dismantled and the rented steel beams will be returned, and the concrete blocks will be sold and reused. The original bridge that was already constructed at the location is enough to cover the traffic flow. The additional seven temporary “pedestrian-only” bridges were added in consideration for the large number of pedestrians during the festival. The county government quickly had the temporary bridges removed after the festival in order to avoid accidents caused by vehicles as the temporary bridges may not sustain the weight of vehicles.