Federal Motorway 643
| Bundesautobahn 643 in Germany | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Operator: |
 Federal Republic of Germany
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| Start of the street: |
Wiesbaden-Dotzheim ( 50 ° 4 ′ N , 8 ° 13 ′ E ) |
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| End of street: |
Autobahn triangle Mainz ( 50 ° 0 ′ N , 8 ° 11 ′ E ) |
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| Overall length: | 8 kilometers | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Development condition: | 2 × 2 lanes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Mainzer Ring with BAB 643 as a western section | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Course of the road
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Map with all coordinates: The federal motorway 643 (abbreviation: BAB 643 ) - short form: Autobahn 643 (abbreviation: A 643 ) - is a German federal motorway that runs in a north-south direction in the federal states of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate and on the one hand the western part of one Forms the motorway ring around Mainz , on the other hand represents a connection to Wiesbaden city center. A large part of the eight-kilometer route falls on the crossing of the Rhine with the Schiersteiner Bridge .
Route
The motorway begins at the Wiesbaden- Dotzheim junction , from which it forms the two-lane continuation of the B 262 , which in turn begins at the Wiesbadener Ringstrasse . Directly behind the start of the autobahn there is a downward gradient towards the Rhine and the Schiersteiner Kreuz , where the BAB 66 ( Rüdesheim - Frankfurt am Main ) crosses . From here the BAB 643, like the BAB 66 east of the cross, forms part of the Mainzer Ring . After the cross, there is the Wiesbaden-Äppelallee junction , which, in addition to the Wiesbaden districts of Schierstein and Biebrich, also connects a large industrial area, before the Rhine is crossed on the almost 1.3 km long Schiersteiner Bridge . Down the river, this is the last fixed Rhine crossing to Koblenz .
To the south of the Rhine you are in Rhineland-Palatinate, where the Mainz- Mombach junction, designed entirely as a bridge structure, leads to the Rheinallee in downtown Mainz. The almost 1 km long high road Lenneberg forms the seamless continuation of the Rhine bridge and leads the BAB 643 through the Mainzer Sand to the next junction Mainz- Gonsenheim . The motorway then ends at the Mainz motorway triangle , where it joins the BAB 60 ( Bingen - Rüsselsheimer Dreieck ). The section of the BAB 60 to the east forms the southern part of the Mainzer Ring.
Start of the motorway in Wiesbaden
View to the south of the Schiersteiner Kreuz
Old Schiersteiner Bridge
Road on the (old) Schiersteiner Bridge
history
In the requirement plan for the federal highways in 1956 , the construction of a ring-shaped bypass road around Mainz was listed for the first time in the course of the development of economic areas on both sides of the Rhine . In the course of this ring road, the third project of its kind alongside Cologne and Bonn , three large bridges were to be built to connect the districts on both sides of the Rhine and Main , the latter originally being assigned to the state of Hesse after the Second World War . A Rhine crossing was planned to the west and south of the city center, and a Main crossing to the east near Hochheim . The whole road was first planned as a motor road in 1955, with separate lanes, but with a narrower cross-section than motorways and without hard shoulders.
The only connection to the motorway network in the Mainz / Wiesbaden area was at the time on the Cologne – Frankfurt am Main motorway near Wallau , today's BAB 3 , which had its southern end point there in the first post-war years. From 1954 a four-lane motor road from Wiesbaden-Erbenheim to Frankfurt was connected there, the forerunner of today's BAB 66 . In the Wiesbaden area, a connection between the ring road and the motorway slip road in the direction of Frankfurt was therefore an option.
On July 13, 1959, the planning approval decision for the Rhine bridge near Schierstein was issued , the construction of which began on September 15 of the same year. While the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was responsible for the Weisenau Bridge, which was built from 1961, the State of Hesse took over responsibility for the Schiersteiner Bridge - both bridges cross the border river between the aforementioned federal states with the Rhine. On December 12, 1962, both the Schiersteiner and the Weisenau Bridge opened at the same time.
At the time of the opening of the Schiersteiner Bridge, the expressway ended at the southern end at today's Mainz-Mombach junction, as the subsequent elevated road was not yet completed. The construction of the Hochstraße Lenneberg did not begin until 1962, it was completed in 1964. The finished parts of the motor road were initially part of the federal highway 262 , before the entire route was upgraded to a motorway in 1966 with the extension to the Mainz triangle. However, the upgrade was carried out without structural adjustments, which is why the entire bridge structure had no hard shoulder or acceleration / deceleration lanes. At the same time as today's BAB 643, the remaining parts of the Mainzer Ring, all of which were built with the dimensions of a motor road, were upgraded to motorways.
With the reorganization of the motorway numbering in 1975, the motorway was given the name Bundesautobahn 643 , which is still valid today . At times, a northern extension of the motorway through the Wiesbaden city area to Taunusstein - Neuhof was planned; With the exception of a spacious section of the federal highway 417 , this project was never realized.
Six-lane expansion and new construction of the Schiersteiner Bridge
Just a few years after it was opened, the bridge structure was no longer able to cope with traffic - instead of the 20,000 vehicles per day forecast during construction, it was almost 80,000 by the mid-1990s. For the first time, between 1997 and 1999, the main bridge structure over the Rhine was repaired together with the renewal of the road surface. After an appraisal of the renovated bridge in 2006, however, serious defects such as cracks in the construction were found, whereupon a speed limit of 60 km / h was imposed, which was monitored with a speed measurement system from September 2008. Since the remaining useful life of the existing bridge structure was forecast by 2015 at the latest, a new construction was inevitable.
Expansion planning
As part of the renovation and expansion of the Schiersteiner Bridge, a widening of the motorway from the Schiersteiner Kreuz on the Hessian side to the Mainz triangle on the Rhineland-Palatinate side was discussed. These costs for the six-lane expansion of the autobahn, from the Mainz autobahn triangle to the Schiersteiner Kreuz, were estimated at 200 million euros in 2008.
Nature conservation associations suggested that the four-lane expansion variant should be retained, including the two hard shoulder if necessary, as well as landscape bridges over the motorway at the level of the existing paths in the Mainz Sand nature reserve . For this purpose, an alliance of nature conservation associations and some parties was founded. The coalition agreement of the red-green state government from 2011 ( Cabinet Beck V ) was defined as the goal of the alliance to implement this model. Only the Schiersteiner Bridge and its northern continuation would have been expanded to six lanes, but the route between the triangle and the Mombach junction would have remained four lanes (with temporary hard shoulder clearance), and the maximum speed should be reduced from the current 100 to 80 km / h. However, the Federal Ministry of Transport rejected this "4 + 2" solution in the summer of 2013 and insisted on a six-lane expansion south of the Schiersteiner Bridge. In February 2015, the Rhineland-Palatinate Transport Minister Roger Lewentz (SPD) announced, with reference to the order of Federal Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU), that he wanted to expand the section south of the Schiersteiner Bridge to six lanes. A survey by the Allgemeine Zeitung from Mainz in July 2015 showed that around 74% of those questioned are in favor of expanding the A643 to six lanes. In the coalition agreement of the SPD / FDP / Green Coalition of 2016 ( Dreyer II cabinet ), the six-lane full expansion of the A643 through the Mainzer Sand nature reserve, which had already been instructed by the federal government, was laid down with construction that was as space-saving as possible. The designated Rhineland-Palatinate transport minister and FDP state chairman Volker Wissing wants to put more pressure on the expansion of the A 643.
The area enjoys the highest level of protection at European level, because it is designated as an FFH and an EU bird sanctuary . When it was built in the 1960s, the motorway had divided the intact area in two. The Mombacher Rheinufer nature reserve will also be affected by the possible construction measures. The meadows there serve u. a. the white storks in the region as important food biotopes. Great care must be taken there.
As a compensation measure for the necessary interventions in the valuable softwood floodplain of the Rettbergsaue , the silted up old Rhine arm of the Schönborn'schen Aue before Geisenheim will be renatured . A meadow forest landscape with its typical meadow vegetation is to be created there.
Full closure in 2015 and new traffic routing
The BAB 643 was completed in both directions on February 10, 2015 at around 10:00 p.m. between the Wiesbaden-Äppelallee junctions and the Mainz motorway triangle due to a lowering of the lane in the area of the Mombach junction, which is located between the Lenneberg high street and the Schiersteiner Brücke blocked. Until February 16, 2015, almost the entire route was closed.
Until April 12, 2015, the blockage was then on the Schiersteiner Bridge in the section between the Wiesbaden-Äppelallee and Mainz-Mombach junctions. After the bridge was successfully brought back to its original position, a so-called weight-in-motion system (WIM) was installed from the south in front of the Mainz-Mombach junction and from the north between the Schiersteiner Kreuz and the Wiesbaden-Äppelallee junction . This measures the permissible weight and width of the vehicles while driving over it. Should a vehicle that is either heavier than 3.5 tonnes or wider than 2.2 meters pass the facility, a traffic light will turn red and a barrier will block the access to the bridge. The vehicle must then leave the motorway at the respective junction.
For this purpose, the two lanes in each direction were separated in the respective lead-up: the left lane leads over the Schiersteiner Bridge, the right lane is used to exit at the Äppelallee or Mombach junctions. The check then takes place in the separated left lane. Another WIM system is located at the MZ-Mombach driveway towards Wiesbaden. The WI-Äppelallee driveway in the direction of Mainz remained completely closed, or only serves as an access for rescue vehicles and fire engines. The MZ-Mombach exit coming from Wiesbaden remained closed anyway due to the construction of the new bridge, the diversion leads via the next junction in Mainz-Gonsenheim, where a roundabout was set up to enable the vehicles to turn around at the junction.
Weekend 7./8. November 2015 this measure was lifted and now trucks up to 40 tons and a maximum passage width of 3.75 meters can drive through in both directions again. After the traffic was shifted to the newly built western half of the bridge in mid-November 2017, there are no longer any restrictions on width and weight.
Damaged part of the bridge
Detail: crack in the concrete
Access controlled by traffic lights
Notice board for the truck blocking (April 12 - November 7, 2015)
Renewal in the Schiersteiner Kreuz
The main bridge structure in Schiersteiner Kreuz and the bridges of the BAB 643 over the railway line south of the cross were replaced by new buildings from 2015 to 2018. After the first preparatory measures in March 2012 (clearing), two temporary bridges were installed in April 2014 to guide the traffic of the BAB 643 past the existing structure. This was then torn down and replaced by a new construction. The same happened with the bridges over the railway line, which were already dimensioned for a planned two-lane expansion of the connecting ramps Frankfurt – Mainz (BAB 66 Ost - BAB 643 Süd). In June 2018, the new bridges were gradually opened to traffic and the temporary bridges dismantled.
July 2013
April 2015
September 2017
October 2018
September 2019
Construction progress
The official groundbreaking for the construction of the new Schiersteiner Bridge took place on September 11, 2013 with the participation of the then Minister of Transport Peter Ramsauer . After four years of construction, the downstream bridge was opened to traffic on November 20, 2017, on which traffic runs with two lanes for both directions. The old bridge was then dismantled and the upstream bridge was built by 2021.
The bridge structures in the Schiersteiner Kreuz have been completed since mid-2018, the renovation of the connecting lanes in the cross and the construction of the Lenneberg high street have not yet started.
Old bridge structure shortly before the start of construction in August 2013
Prepared construction site in April 2014
Construction of the downstream (western) bridge in July 2015
Traffic allocation to downstream bridge in November 2017
Demolition of the old structure in March 2018
Completed downstream and upstream bridge under construction in September 2019
particularities
- Although the motorway begins in Wiesbaden, the kilometer marking does not begin at kilometer 0.0, but at 300.0 and then descends in the direction of Mainz to approx. 292.0 (Mainz triangle).
- The Mombach motorway junction is one of the few in Germany that is on a bridge. Since the Schiersteiner Bridge was completed two years before the Hochstraße, the corresponding entrances and exits were laid out in two lanes. The Lenneberg high street was not completed and connected until 1964. However, these entrances and exits were only equipped with very shortened acceleration and deceleration lanes, as both bridges were originally planned and built as federal roads. For this reason there are also street lights and traffic control systems in this area, but they have not been in operation since the mid-1980s.
- In December 2012 the ADAC published statistics in which the A 643 is one of the ten most dangerous motorways for wrong-way drivers . In 2010 and 2011 there were 23 reports of wrong-way drivers on the short motorway. In absolute figures, the A 661 (Darmstadt - Bad Homburg) with 50 and the A 98 (Weil am Rhein - Tiengen) with 30 wrong-way driver reports are in front of the A 643. Extrapolated to 100 km and per year, there are statistically 142.0 wrong-way driver reports and thus also "3rd place". According to these statistics, only the A 980 (Waltenhofen AD - Allgäu) with 156.9 and A 255 (Hamburg-Süd - Neue Elbbrücken ) with 166.7 statistical wrong-way driver reports per 100 km per year are more dangerous .
Web links
- Detailed route description of the federal motorway 643
- A 643 - construction documentation for the Mombacher foreland bridge on the website of the Landesbetrieb Mobility Rhineland-Palatinate
In the news:
- Jens Grützner: FDP State Secretary Mücke: Federal Ministry of Transport has been waiting for a draft from Mainz for the A643 expansion since December 13th . ( Memento from March 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Allgemeine-zeitung.de, March 7, 2013.
- A643 expansion: "Once broken is finally broken". In: Frankfurter Rundschau . February 26, 2013.
- Jochen Dietz: Autobahn A 643: Six lanes are the law. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. March 8, 2013 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Triangle Mainz. In: Autobahnkreuz-Online. Archived from the original on March 10, 2016 ; accessed on August 7, 2016 .
- ↑ a b The new Rhine bridge Wiesbaden-Schierstein , Hessen Mobil, accessed on September 25, 2019
- ↑ Success at the round table. (PDF; 43 kB) Press release. Alliance "Put nothing in the (Mainzer) sand", archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved May 6, 2011 .
- ↑ Individual transport infrastructure projects . In: Shaping the socio-ecological change . Coalition agreement between the SPD and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen 2011-2016. S. 64 ( online [PDF; 966 kB ; accessed on May 6, 2011]).
- ↑ Markus Lachmann: Letter from Transport Minister Dobrindt of February 6th: Six lanes for the A643 in Rhineland-Palatinate - Lewentz statements on the demolition of the approach bridge. In: Allgemeine Zeitung. March 3, 2015, accessed August 27, 2015 .
- ↑ Monika Nellessen: Disagreement over Mainz "bottleneck" - six-lane expansion of the A643 meets with skepticism. In: Allgemeine Zeitung. February 24, 2015, accessed August 27, 2015 .
- ↑ Markus Lachmann: Survey on the infrastructure in Rhineland-Palatinate: majority calls for a new Rhine bridge and six-lane expansion of the A643. In: Allgemeine Zeitung. July 7, 2015, accessed August 27, 2015 .
- ↑ Measures of the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan . In: Socially just - economically strong - ecologically responsible. Rhineland-Palatinate on the way into the next decade . Coalition agreement between the SPD, FDP and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen 2016-2021. S. 49 ( online [PDF; 1.1 MB ; accessed on April 29, 2016]).
- ↑ Courageous for more creative power. In: portal liberal. May 2, 2016. Retrieved April 29, 2016 .
- ^ Renaturation of an arm of the old Rhine. In: A 643 new construction of Schiersteiner Bridge. Hessen Mobil, accessed on March 16, 2014 .
- ↑ Higher, multi-lane descents, better traffic flow: The new Schiersteiner Kreuz in Wiesbaden , echo-online from June 13, 2018
- ↑ Construction process. In: A 643 new construction of Schiersteiner Bridge. Hessen Mobil, accessed December 7, 2017 .
- ↑ First half of the bridge released. In: A 643 new construction of Schiersteiner Bridge. Hessen Mobil, November 21, 2017, accessed December 6, 2017 .
- ^ The ten most dangerous highways. (PDF; 23 kB) ADAC, December 2012, archived from the original on March 30, 2016 ; Retrieved December 25, 2012 .
- ↑ ADAC statistics: A643 between Mainz and Wiesbaden is one of the most dangerous wrong-way driver highways. In: Allgemeine Zeitung. December 20, 2012, archived from the original on February 17, 2013 ; Retrieved December 20, 2012 .
- ↑ Many wrong-way drivers on the A643 - ADAC - route between Mainz and Wiesbaden one of the most dangerous routes . In: Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz . December 21, 2012, p. 1 .
- ↑ Ken Chowanetz: Danger lurks on the A643 - Statistics: ADAC determines the frequency of wrong-way drivers on German motorways . In: Allgemeine Zeitung . December 21, 2012, Panorama.
