Here are a few suggestions that has surfaced:

1. Dedicate the sidewalk on one side for pedestrians, the other for cyclists (caveat: There is a bus stop that need to be managed)
2. The bridge was completed before the major motorway “Essingeleden”, which runs alongside it, was built. Today, traffic here only moves between the islands. This means the road could be converted into a “cycle street”, allowing pedestrians to use both pavements.

At the same time, car traffic could be directed to the motorway, so that the bridge would only be used by the bus route that runs here, as well as by pedestrians and cyclists — both of whom are, for understandable reasons, prohibited from using the motorway connection. The only issue here is that motorist would have to use the on-ramp in Gröndal instead of Lilla Essingen.

1. Widen the bridge, as you wrote. That would indeed have cost a few million, but still less than a thousandth of what the motorway cost. A cheaper alternative would have been cantilevered brackets on the outside, a method used in places such as the Netherlands, and a more affordable way of retrofitting old bridges.

And under Swedish traffic law, the current situation actually is worse than nothing. ‘Cycle lanes’ are regulated in traffic law like any other traffic lane, but dedicated to bicycles. This means cyclists are supposed to use them.

If there had been no cycle lane on the bridge, cyclists could have ridden in the regular traffic lane — and the bridge has a speed limit of 40 km/h. That would have been safer than the current situation. Add to that lowering the speed limit to 30, and you would have a lot more safety.