At the end of May 2024, the Moseltal Bridge presented a rare spectacle. Twenty-four bright red trucks were parked side by side in the middle of the highway’s wide bridge, at a height of 136 meters (446 feet). The 960-tonne load served to check the resistance capacity of the more than 50-year-old route, which is now badly worn and damaged. In early 2023, cracks were discovered in the metal structure of the nearly kilometer-long bridge. The effects of the tests are still being evaluated.
The Moseltal Bridge is not an isolated case. In Germany, up to 5,000 of the country’s 40,000 highway bridges are in such poor condition that they are in urgent need of repair. All bridges are inspected and scores are given based on their structural condition.
More than a portion of the motorway bridges were built before 1985, adding most of the giant valley bridges of the former West Germany. Designed to accommodate less traffic and lighter vehicles, the bridges are now so overcrowded that many of them are showing signs of deterioration. In recent years very little has been done for them.
It is unimaginable to renew them all at the same time. Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing called it a generational project and requires building around 400 bridges each year. “We are setting new priorities to build a technical bridge to modernization strategically and in the greatest practical order,” he said after the first “bridge summit” in Berlin in 2022.
This will require simplifying planning, procedures and coordination to drive renovations and new construction. A question when setting priorities: how long can a ruined bridge continue to be used? Setting a speed limit and banning it for heavy vehicles may simply lengthen the life of a bridge, but even those kinds of restrictions cannot rule out a sudden collapse.
At the end of 2021, the Rahmede Bridge in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia was so damaged that it had to be closed for fear of collapsing. After all, it was demolished in 2023 and new structures are being built. The first phase is not expected to be completed before 2026 at the earliest.
It is a crisis for the region. Before the closure, approximately 48,000 cars and nearly 16,000 trucks crossed the bridge each day. Although traffic is diverted over a huge area, thousands of cars still pass through the small town of Lüdenscheid and neighboring villages every day or two.
Residents complain of kilometer-long traffic jams, excessive noise and pollution. The lack of a bridge also means that select routes in the domain are congested. As a result, six other bridges can no longer support the load, have been closed or are only open for limited use.
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The regional economy felt the impact. Businesses are arriving, commutes are getting longer, and businesses are suffering, adding shops and restaurants along busy downtown routes where excess traffic has scared away customers.
In 2022, the German Economic Institute (IW) presented an “economic damage assessment”, according to which companies in the Lüdenscheid region will suffer a 2% drop. And the economy will shrink by 300 million euros ($326 million) per year.
“The negative effects of the closure of the bridge will amount to at least 1,800 million euros in the next five years,” the study states. “Every year that the bridge is completed earlier, billions of euros can be saved. “
But speeding up the construction of structures is not so simple. Large infrastructure projects require years of pre-planning. And in Germany there are regulations that require accurate and lengthy inspections, especially for giant projects.
Considerations of neighboring communities, as well as environmental restrictions, must also be considered during the plan approval process. The concept is that the more people involved in the project, the more likely the public will be on board with giant infrastructure projects.
But this especially prolongs projects, even through foreign standards. One example is the structure of the Fehmarnbelt tunnel under the Baltic Sea between Germany and Denmark. On the German side, the government of the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein received 3,100 objections and comments that filled 41 folders. During the Danish public hearings, 42 comments were made across the government, businesses and citizens.
The German government is looking to speed things up. A law was introduced in late 2023 that will eliminate the need for entry permits and the environmental impact on bridge testing that is expanded to add lanes as part of renovations. This would reportedly cut the time for planning and approval in half.
But there is also a lack of money. From 2025, the German government will have to make big cuts to comply with the debt brake enshrined in the Constitution. At the same time, inflation has driven up the value of building materials and the prices of hard work have also increased.
This year, 4,600 million euros have been set aside for the renovation of motorways and connecting bridges. According to current forecasts, this figure is expected to reach €5 billion from 2025. However, the state-owned Autobahn GmbH has already announced that an additional €5. 5 billion will be needed for the years 2025 to 2028. Budget discussions have seen the Transport Minister’s budget for 2025 as one of the areas where savings can be made, and leaks have revealed that Wissing is also cutting investments. for highway and bridge renovations.
The German Federal Court of Auditors considers this to be a mistake. In January 2024, he warned that the federal government was at risk of missing its bridge renewal targets. He said priority would be given to bridges or more closures would be expected.
Wissing believes he has a way out: a new infrastructure fund that the Free Democratic Party (FDP) needs to create with personal capital. But investors expect profitability. Will drivers then have to pay to use a bridge?At the moment, there are no concrete plans for this fund.
This article was originally written in German.
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