Ready for the future: Linköping is building a mobility hub

One of those new facilities that we will be seeing more of

The Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore publishes a list of new words and expressions in use every year, and one of these words for 2021 was ‘mobility hub’. The Swedish city of Linköping, for its part, was apparently ahead of the curve on that thing, since it has been building a dedicated mobility hub building since October 2020. Its municipal website recently reported that the facility, to be called Neptunus, will be ready at the beginning of 2023.

What will be the use for the mobility hub?

So, what does ‘mobility hub’ mean anyway? The Language Institute’s definition says that it is a "facility where there is a range of different means of transport and where vehicles can be parked, charged or borrowed". Construction project manager Niklas Hallkvist describes Linköping's upcoming mobility hub Neptunus as follows:

“Hubb is a hub (referring to the Swedish word mobilitetshubb), and mobility is to move. It should be a hub where you can start or stop moving in other ways than with your own car. There should be different alternatives. And what we see today is, for example, a shared car and a bicycle. But there will be other ways in the future.”

Neptunus will be located next to the city’s new indoor swimming pool in the inner-city district of Folkungavallen.

It will contain about 620 parking spaces divided into seven levels, many of them with chargers for electric cars. On the ground floor, there will be a shop of 1200 square meters. There will also be technical spaces for the Technical Works services, in terms of heating and electricity, as well as covered parking for bicycles.

Neptune is solid concrete construction, built with so-called strap technology, which allows the use of less concrete than normally needed.

“Another advantage is that we get long spans. In this way, we can have completely pillar-free parking spaces, which many drivers, who may have had their car scratched against a pillar, will appreciate,” adds Niklas Hallkvist.

The stabilizing element will therefore be the concrete façade of the building, which will nevertheless also feature holes for ventilation.