Autobahn 12 (Switzerland)
| Autobahn 12 in Switzerland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Basic data | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Operator: | Federal Roads Office | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Start of the street: |
Vevey ( 46 ° 29 ′ N , 6 ° 52 ′ E ) |
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| End of the road: |
Bern ( 46 ° 57 ′ N , 7 ° 24 ′ E ) |
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| Overall length: | approx. 80 km | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Canton : |
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Course of the road
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Map with all coordinates: The Swiss Highway 12 , congruent with the national road 12, leading from the A9 at Vevey along the Friborg Alps via Freiburg to A1 in Bern and thus provides an important link of the western Switzerland to Bern. The highway acts as the main mode of transport of the canton of Friborg and crosses the canton area in the diagonal from Châtel-Saint-Denis in the southwest to Flamatt in the northeast. The entire stretch of the motorway has been open to traffic since 1981. The La Gruyère rest stop with an attached hotel is located in a panoramic position above Lake Gruyère .
course
The A12 starts at the La Veyre junction of the A9 on a plateau ( 500 m above sea level ) above Vevey. During the first 5.5 km, the motorway rises along the eastern slope of the Veveyse up to 820 m above sea level. M. and forms a sharp S-curve. This section of the motorway with an average gradient of 5.8% and maximum gradients of over 6% forms one of the steepest sections of the motorway on the Swiss national road network . After the uphill section, the Veveyse de Fégire valley cut is crossed with a high bridge. Once you have reached the high plateau of the Haute Veveyse at the foot of the foothills of the Alps, only minor differences in altitude are covered. The culmination point is at an altitude of 866 m above sea level. M. near the hamlet of Prayoud northeast of Châtel-Saint-Denis. Here the European main watershed between the Rhone (with the catchment area of the Veveyse) and the Rhine (with the catchment areas of Broye and Saane ) is passed.
For a length of 15 km, the A12 now runs at an altitude of over 800 m above sea level. M. , before reaching the Gruyère region and the Bulle basin . It then leads north between the Lac de la Gruyère reservoir and the heights of the Gibloux . Two open-cast tunnels were built at Gumefens and Avry-devant-Pont to protect against noise . North of the latter is the most important structure on the A12, the approximately 2 km long Viaduc du Lac de la Gruyère , which was built between 1974 and 1979 and spans the western valley slope and two short branches of the Lac de la Gruyère in a curved curve .
The motorway then enters the Molasse plateau of the Freiburg Central Plateau, with a difference in altitude of just over 100 m being overcome in several stages. After the bridge over the Glâne , the agglomeration of Freiburg is bypassed in the west and north-west through hilly terrain, before the Saanegraben with another bridge over the Schiffenensee (also called Pont de la Madeleine, based on the hermitage in the sandstone rocks little next to the motorway bridge) and thus the language border is crossed.
As a result, the traffic axis runs over the little relief plateau near Düdingen and Wünnewil . With a bridge at Flamatt, which has a gradient of 4%, the plateau is left and the valley of the Sense is reached. Then the A12 leads through the relatively densely populated Wangental valley, which is filled with industrial and commercial buildings, to the western border of the city of Bern. After the southern bypass of the Bümpliz district , the plateau is crossed with an almost 1 km long bridge before the motorway joins the A1 at the Weyermannshaus junction.
Engineering structures
Due to the hilly to pre-alpine topography, the A12 motorway has various engineering structures, especially bridges. The most important of these are (in the sequence from Vevey to Bern):
- Viaduc de Fégire: 512 m long, 90 m high
- Tunnel de Gumefens: 340 m long, open pit tunnel
- Tunnel d'Avry: 170 m long, opencast tunnel
- Viaduc du Lac de la Gruyère: 2044 m long, 33 piers, with a pillar height between 2 and 85 m
- Viaduc de la Glâne: around 200 m long, 40 m high
- Pont de la Madeleine (bridge over the Schiffenensee): 320 m long, with an average reservoir height of the lake 41 m above the water surface
- Flamatt motorway bridge: 648 m long, 4% gradient, leads over the residential and commercial areas of Flamatt
- Thörishaus opencast tunnel: 110 m long
- Weyermannshaus viaduct: 912 m long, 10 to 15 m high
Historical aspects
The management of a motorway through the canton of Friborg was already studied in the 1950s. There have been specific plans for the route for the first sections since the early 1960s. The first step was the line between Corpataux and Matran at the end of 1963, followed a year later by the north-eastern continuation of the motorway to Düdingen. In 1966 and 1967, respectively, the sections were approved by the then Federal Transport and Energy Department and construction began soon afterwards.
On July 31, 1971, the section from Düdingen to Corpataux was the first section of the A12 motorway to go into operation. The city of Freiburg received a bypass for transit traffic. Initially, only one directional carriageway was created from Matran to Corpataux, the second followed around seven years later. The last section between Vaulruz and the A9 near Vevey was opened at the end of 1981.
| Opening of the motorway sections of the A12 | |
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| section | date |
| A1 - Thörishaus | 7th Dec 1977 |
| Thörishaus - Flamatt | Dec 6, 1976 |
| Flamatt - Düdingen | 27 Sep 1973 |
| Düdingen - Matran | Jul 31, 1971 |
| Matran - Corpataux: first carriageway | Jul 31, 1971 |
| Matran - Corpataux: second carriageway | Jul 14, 1978 |
| Corpataux-Avry-devant-Pont | Oct. 31, 1979 |
| Avry-devant-Pont-Vuippens | Nov 23, 1981 |
| Vuippens - bull | Nov 8, 1978 |
| Bull - Vaulruz | Jul 29, 1977 |
| Vaulruz - A9 | Nov 23, 1981 |
With the continuous A12 there was a motorway connection between the national roads of German-speaking Switzerland and those of French -speaking Switzerland since the end of 1981 . As a result, the line from Bern via the A12 and A9 to Lausanne to the A1 developed into the main transit route between Zurich and Geneva for around 20 years . However, the A12 was always prone to black ice and snow-covered roads during winter due to the steep gradients and the long sections at altitudes above 700 m.
When the A1 was also continuously put into operation in 2001, some of the traffic shifted back to the motorway originally intended as a transit route. This is very well documented by the counting stations in Wünnewil and Bulle (overland routes), on which around 29,000 vehicles on average were measured in 2000, compared to just over 22,000 vehicles in 2002 (around 20% less than two years earlier). The highest traffic densities on the A12 in 2004 were registered in the Freiburg area with an average daily traffic of 29,000 vehicles.
The full opening of the A12 motorway gave the Friborg and Bulle regions as well as the structurally weak Haute Veveyse significant economic impetus and made the Gruyère tourist region easy to reach from both the Lake Geneva region and Bern.