According to a survey, the federal government underestimates the renovation backlog among the dilapidated bridges in Germany. According to the organization Transport & Environment (T&E), around 16,000 bridges are dilapidated in federal hands.
“If the renovation of these bridges is delayed, they are more susceptible to wear, which leads to even higher costs in the medium term.” At the federal, state and municipal level, up to 100 billion euros must be invested in the replacement of bridges according to T & e-calculations.
T&E is a European umbrella organization of non-state organizations that claims to work for sustainable traffic.
Ring Railway and Carol Bridge as examples of the dilapidated bridge
Already now leads the outdated Infrastructure To ensure that buildings have to be blocked again and again at short notice. The most recent example is the so -called Ringbahnbrücke on the A100 in western Berlin. It has been tight since mid -March because a tear in the structure had increased.
The building of 1963 is currently being demolished – then a new building is to follow. When the new bridge is standing is open. The Ringbahnbrücke belongs to one of the most important traffic nodes in Germany – the motorway triangle radio tower.
At the local level, the Carol Bridge in Dresden is probably the most prominent case. The bridge fell into the Elbe in September 2024.
“It has long been foreseeable that many bridges in the German road network are in poor condition,” writes T&E in the report that is available to the German Press Agency. “Many bridges, often built in the 1970s, were originally designed for a lower load.”
Above all, T&E criticizes that that Ministry of Transport in his bridge modernization program of 2022 does not take a look at the entire motorway network. According to the ministry’s renovation plan, 4,000 bridges in the core network are to be renovated in a period of ten years. In the long term, another 4,000 motorway bridges should follow.
The bridges are in poor condition, especially in city -states
T&E comes to significantly higher numbers: «A total of 5,905 bridges, 24 percent of the bridge area in the federal highway network, have to be replaced. Another 10,240 bridges are so heavily loaded that a replacement building is probably necessary, but it may also be possible to remedy the situation by reinforcement. »
The condition of the bridges is not equally bad everywhere. “The city -states of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen are particularly affected, in which many bridges are significantly stressed above their original interpretation.” In North Rhine-Westphalia, the proportion of the bridge area that needs to be rebuilt is twice as high as in Bavaria. The bridges in the East German countries, on the other hand, “largely built in the 1990s and were already designed for higher traffic loads at that time”.
“Triage when modernizing road bridges”
“We actually know exactly which bridge has to be renovated quickly,” said Benedikt Hey from T&E Germany. “But the Ministry of Transport lags the necessities so far that Autobahn GmbH now carries out a triage in modernizing road bridges. This is absurd and expensive, because every delayed renovation will cost a lot more in the future. »
T&E demands from the future federal government, among other things, that the renovation and maintenance must have priority before building new highways and federal roads. In addition, the federal and state governments would have to give the municipalities more money for the infrastructure. The basis of the T&E calculations are, among other things, data from the Federal Agency for Road and Transport.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 250416-930-443136/1
