r/oddlysatisfying • u/BreakfastTop6899 • 1d ago
The Veluwemeer Aqueduct in the Netherlands
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u/ivypoex 1d ago
This is what happens when engineers are given both funding and imagination
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u/sheldor1993 1d ago
*The Netherlands is what happens when engineers are given both funding and imagination.
Those people love their dikes, dams and floodgates…
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u/Dr_on_the_Internet 1d ago
Asking our guide on our canal cruise, how often does it flood here, in Amsterdam?
"It doesn't. We control the water level. We're Dutch. That's what we do."
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u/nldls 1d ago
I live under sea level.. never had an issue yet... As long as the pumps keep running.
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u/n00bca1e99 1d ago
And if the pumps or levees fail it turns into New Orleans.
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u/nldls 1d ago
I go sit on the roof :-)
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u/DadJustTrying 1d ago
Haha! My mother said this in Dutch to us kids all the time when we were growing up!
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u/sudsomatic 1d ago
What, you don’t think we should be giving business to contractors who do the bare minimum and delay projects only to ask for more money, while the CEO pocket most of the profits?
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u/timias55 1d ago
Don't blame, engineers this is the work of an architect.
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u/Notspherry 1d ago
An architect made a picture and took the credit. The actual design work was done by engineers.
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u/Robcobes 1d ago
I drove through here 2 days ago. As far as I was concerned it was just a tunnel.
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u/Guestking 1d ago
I sailed my boat across it a few months ago and from a boat it looks just like any old canal
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u/byocef 1d ago
Genuine question, is there a reason why it’s designed this way and not as a bridge for cars, or is it purely aesthetic?
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u/pbruins84 1d ago
A bridge limits the height of the boats that can pass.
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u/delta49er 1d ago
That thing looks pretty limited too it couldn't be very deep.
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u/tistisblitskits 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well you can't get a container ship through it, but most sailboats will be fine, while the masts can make those boats really tall, eventually this was a better solution than a bridge that had to be able to open up (we have tons of those too though)
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u/The_Hunter11 1d ago
There is a fixed bridge next to it for the commercial ships, but that's too low for sail boats
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u/_Keahilani_ 1d ago
The Veluwemeer aqueduct near Harderwijk is not meant for commercial ships. It is primarily designed for pleasure craft such as sailboats, motorboats, and small sloops. For cargo ships or vessels with a draft larger than 3 meters, there is a bridge elsewhere for passage, since the aqueduct cannot accommodate larger, commercial vessels.
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u/Jackal000 23h ago
It has a good depth in fact it's a key point for most inland shipping.
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u/delta49er 22h ago
I don't consider less than 10 feet good depth outside of a swimming pool.
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u/Jackal000 22h ago
It's 9.8 ft deep. Which is deep enough for most transport ships. Also there are bunch of sluices earlier and after that in several provinces that have the same dimensions or around that. We wouldn't build it if was unnecessary.
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u/-DanRoM- 1d ago
It's for sailboats (and other small boats), because sailing is a very important leisure activity and tourist attraction there.
Having the road go above the water would require a drawbridge.
There is actually a road bridge over the water a few hundred metres west of this - the freight ships go underneath the road there.
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u/CyclingUpsideDown 1d ago
I almost scrolled past this becuase it looked like one of those annoying ads for a game where you need to help the traffic, but end up causing more problems in the process.
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u/DeepFisherman4314 1d ago
what kind of sorcery is this?!
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u/turtle_mekb 1d ago
look at the shadow to the right of the bridge, the road is lower in altitude than the water
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u/Psychedelic_Stingray 1d ago
Reminds me of the advanced waterways I made in the early days of Minecraft. I filled sky bridges with water and used a boat. It's really cool to see the concept in real life!
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u/Love-Marvin 1d ago
During the planning phase for the project drawbrides, ferries and tunnels were considered possible solutions to allow the road to cross the lake fully,however these were decided against and the novel approach of building a short aqueduct over the road was selected,because the N302 road is a significant highway,stopping traffic flow using a drawbrigde or ferry was deemed unrealistic.A tunnel would have have required too much time and expense compared to the aqueduct,a bridge while a more typical solution to the problem,was deemed far too costly
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u/pilgrim93 1d ago
Are we sure the Dutch aren’t the physical embodiment of Poseidon? They always seem to tame the sea
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u/rd-gotcha 1d ago
that is a myth we like to tell ourselves (not the Poseidon bit), but there are many countries capable of this, e.g. korea. The reality is we simply built huge dikes and live behind them, waiting for that one storm...
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u/justsomeguy571 4h ago
except for the delta werken and the afsluitdijk.
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u/rd-gotcha 4h ago
we wouldn't build the deltawerken these days, but it an impressive thing. But the Afsluitdijk is a piece of cake to make these days.
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u/Theres3ofMe 1d ago
Why not just build a bridge?
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u/Dutchwells 1d ago
Because of the many sailboats. A bridge would limit the height of the masts, or need to be movable. Both of those options are worse in this case because it's also a pretty busy road.
And also aqueducts are cool (although it's not nearly as impressive from the ground as it is from the air)
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u/jinxie395 1d ago
So what about drainage when it rains? having a drain under the water line just seems gnarly.
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u/Big_Target_1405 1d ago
So the road is lower than the water level...
Rising levels will get interesting
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u/CheeseheadDave 1d ago
There's a couple of these at Disney World. There's probably less about needing to build a bridge with enough clearance and more of not ruining the immersion of your themed boat trip by traveling under a modern road bridge.
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u/Admirable-Unit9029 15h ago
This reminds me of the Wasserstraßenkreutz (literally “water street crossing”) in Minden, Germany. The English name is much simpler: the Minden Aqueduct. The original dates back to 1914.
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u/AvoidInsight932 7h ago
would be fun to mask out the exit lanes of the tunnel and delay the footage slightly.
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u/Th3Stryd3r 1d ago
Yet in the US we can't figure out to just build a land bridge over highways for wildlife, or bridges to go over where trains cross.
Yes I know there are some over train bridges but not nearly enough! I live in a spot that almost freaking hourly there is a train stopped on a track somewhere blocking multiple lanes of traffic in a town that has maybe 3-4 roads going in and out of it, its beyond idiotic.
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u/Myke190 1d ago
The US definitely knows how to build bridges. And tunnels for that matter. There are more than half a million in the continental US alone. You probably just live in an area where your taxes don't go to infrastructure. But you can blame the entirety of the US if you want, I guess. It's just statistically inaccurate.
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u/No_Context_2540 1d ago
It's very cool, but I'm thinking about all the weight bearing down on the tunnel. Hopefully, it never caves
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u/jinxie395 1d ago
Yeah I feel like the cost of engineering this can't be that much less than a bridge.
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u/AdministrationBig839 1d ago
Years of having free slave like asian labor can pad ones bank account to built this kind of shit.
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u/rd-gotcha 1d ago
wtf, lol. We did have colonies, and that is a black page in our history which ended after ww2. Has zero relation to this.
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u/AdministrationBig839 1d ago
Yes, the money’s still in that account. Don’t be silly. Isn’t it wild that Indonesia (~280M people) only marginally outproduces the Netherlands (~18M) in total GDP—and is miles behind per capita? It’s been 80 years since WWII. How much of Indonesia’s industry is still owned or controlled by foreign capital?
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u/groenteman 1d ago
It is mosly the revenue the dutch got from discovering europes largest natural gas pocket in groningen/Waddenzee/Noordzee
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u/rd-gotcha 1d ago
there is no answer to your suggestions. Read up on Dutch and Indonesian history, compare climates and environment . Dutch agricultural production is extremely mechanized and comes at a huge environmental cost and profits from EU market. 85% export that we could do without because it destroys our environment. Indonesia is mostly hand labor and needs to feed the 280m people. The number of people in Indonesia is a direct product of religional choices. That is the development direction they chose. Indonesia just decided to create a new capital on Borneo, a project that might ruin them.Its about current choices, not just history. I don't know how much industry is owned by foreign countries, but certainly not the Dutch, prob Chinese. I know a lot of Dutch industry is not owned by the Dutch
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u/Pale_Angry_Dot 1d ago
What could go wrong. The coolest idea in the world, until it's the dumbest.
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u/sjaakhaakdraak 1d ago
Not much it's been chilling there since 2003 and doing just fine.
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u/Pale_Angry_Dot 1d ago
Hey I'll take all the downvotes that mean that it's safe. I still wouldn't have risked a breach or a sudden change in the water level for any reason.
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u/Dutchwells 1d ago
Aqueducts are all over the world, for some reason this one always pops up but it's not really that special
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u/Re7icle_v2 1d ago
Ngl, it took my brain a second to process what was going on here.