Many cities including Stockholm gave highways as a solution to traffic congestion. Essingeleden motorway is part of European route E4 and today is the busiest road in Sweden. It connects the north and the south part of the country, by crossing islands of central Stockholm. The result of that is a huge swath through the city, that splits the island of Kungsholmen into two pieces, creating isolated neighbourhoods and huge traffic jams. I believe that Essingeleden is reaching its end as a highway, especially since Stockholm is preparing to become a fossil fuel-free city until 2050. Last, the Stockholm bypass project will be able to replace Essingeleden outside the city centre, therefore the Essingeleden worth is being called into question.  Through my diploma project I will propose the transformation of Essingeleden motorway into surface streets, boulevards and parks to improve the accessibility and the street network. Furthermore, my solution will connect the isolated neighbourhoods by healing the local street networks and improve the regional traffic dispersion. Last, since Essingeleden highway is a very strong and central network, parts of the infrastructure will remain and will accommodate a new public transportation route to replace the highway network.

Bostadsbristen är ett problem  som sträcker sig över hela landet. Platser för bebyggelse i städerna minskar.  Arbetet undersöker tre platser i Stockholm för framtida bebyggelse. Rapporten behandlar problem som dycker upp vid förtätning av Sveriges storstäder. Sverige har en lång historia gällande stadsbyggnad där olika ideal har format städerna under åren. Sveriges storstäder begränsas när det gäller platser som behövs för framtida bostäder. Nya metoder undersöks för att skapa ny mark att bebygga och en av platserna som behandlas i arbetet planeras en överdäckning. Platserna som behandlas i arbetet ligger på Lilla Essingen, överdäckning av Fredhällstunneln och östra delen av Södermalm.

This project explores the transition of a logistical artery through the city of Stockholm, and what happens in the wake of building something new. The focus is to establish a process in which making new out of what is found to accelerate the final design of a proposal. Artifacts are found within the logic of a system, imposed by the author to narrow the search for form that could influence the development of a new program. The conclusion of this is that form is not arbitrary, only the system within which form is found. The process of this project relates to the notion of speed. The speed of transitioning waste-space into urban-space using drawing, collage, building, photographing, making. The method of making is discovered through the act of making rather than a premise for the project. This means that the proposal is just were the process stopped, to be presented as an argument for the process. The only thing that the process in turn shows is time, and the probability of finding a state of transition.

Any situation that causes traffic to stop or slow down creates cost for society, both in terms of lost time for the road users and increased CO2 emissions. Trafik Stockholm, a traffic management centre for Stockholm collectively run by STA, Stockholm city and Nacka municipality therefore have the responsibility to facilitate the removal of such situations. One of the means by which they do that is by sending out road assistance vehicles (RAVs) to help clearing these situations. In order to do so effectively there is a need to know the effect of emergency lights on the time it takes for the RAV to reach its destination. This thesis thus examines how the emergency lights affect the speed at which the RAVs can travel by comparing the actual speed at which the RAVs have travelled using emergency lights to the mean speed of traffic on the same highway at the same time. It is concluded that there might be a significant effect, but further studies are necessary to prove this statistically.