Köln-Ost motorway junction

Köln-Ost motorway junction
map
location
Country:	Germany
State :	North Rhine-Westphalia
Coordinates:	50 ° 57 '9 "  N , 7 ° 2' 12"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 57 '9 "  N , 7 ° 2' 12"  E
Height:	45  m above sea level NN
Basic data
Design type:	Maltese cross with an indirect ramp
Bridges:	5 (motorway) / 4 (other)
Construction year:	1974
Last modification:	2007
From the direction of Olpe

The Kreuz Köln-Ost (abbreviation: AK Köln-Ost ; short form: Kreuz Köln-Ost ) is a motorway junction in North Rhine-Westphalia , which is located in the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region . It combines the motorways A 3 ( Oberhausen - Frankfurt am Main - Passau ), A 4 ( Aachen - Jena - Dresden ) and the B 55a , to the Zoobrücke as yellow highway extends.

geography

The cross is located in the area of ​​the city of Cologne , near the districts of Buchheim and Merheim . It is located about 5 km east of Cologne city center and about 60 km west of Olpe . It is also on the eastern section of the Cologne motorway ring .

The motorway junction is number 27 on the A3, and number 16 on the A4.

history

The cross was created in the early 1970s when the Cologne city motorway was connected to the A 4 in the direction of Olpe. In the north-south direction it was also designed for the A 59 , which was to run parallel to the A 3 between the Heumarer Dreieck and a planned motorway junction between the Leverkusen and Cologne-Mülheim junctions . The individual lanes of the A 59 should run outside the A 3. The central bridge structure of the A 3 and the routing of the connecting ramps were designed for this traffic routing when the junction was built. In 2007, as part of the eight-lane expansion of the A3, the underpass of the A 59 in the direction of Leverkusen under the Tangente Olpe - Oberhausen was removed, in July 2016 the underpass of the A 59 in the direction of Aachen / Frankfurt under the Tangente Oberhausen - Cologne- Center dismantled. The underpasses of the two other tangents still exist, as do the bridges over the semi-direct ramps from Cologne-Zentrum (B 55a) towards Oberhausen and Olpe - Aachen / Frankfurt.

Design

As one of the few motorway junctions in Germany, it is almost entirely designed as a variant of the Maltese cross . Only the connection from the A 3 / A 4 from the south to the B 55a leads over a right curve to the central bridge structure.

State of development

Expansion section of the A3 in front of the Köln-Ost junction

The A 3 has been expanded to eight lanes in a northerly direction to the Leverkusen junction. In addition, there are acceleration and deceleration lanes in front of the cross, so that a total of 12 lanes (6 in each direction) are available here. The A4 in the direction of Olpe has been expanded to six lanes. The section up to the Heumarer Dreieck , on which the A3 and A4 run together, is largely eight-lane, with acceleration lanes even ten lanes added. In a westerly direction, the six-lane B 55a runs as a yellow motorway to over the Zoobrücke , which was to become the continuation of the A 57 as part of the Cologne city motorway . With the exception of the Cologne-Oberhausen connection (2 lanes throughout), all ramps are single-lane.

Specialty

Northern part of the "duraBASt" test site at the Köln-Ost motorway junction

In a previously unused area of ​​the Cologne-East junction, Straßen.NRW implemented a research area for the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt). There, new developments in the field of road construction for the traffic of the future are being tested. In June 2015, construction work began on “duraBASt”, the “demonstration, investigation and reference area of ​​the Federal Highway Research Institute”, which cost around seven million euros. The opening took place on October 18, 2017; the cost was 13 million euros.

Traffic volume

The cross is used by around 259,000 vehicles every day, the second highest value in Germany after the Frankfurter Kreuz .

From	To	Average daily traffic volume			Share of heavy goods traffic
		2005	2010	2015	2005	2010	2015
AS Köln-Dellbrück (A 3)	AK Cologne-East	165,000	157,100	166,700	no data	10.1%	12.4%
AK Cologne-East	Heumarer triangle (A 3 / A 4)	144,400	166,100	171,200	12.1%	10.6%	12.8%
AS Frankfurter Strasse (B 55a)	AK Cologne-East	no data	065,900	058,300	no data	03.2%	01.7%
AK Cologne-East	AS Köln-Merheim (A 4)	106,000	090,900	122,200	no data	07.1%	06.2%

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "duraBASt" - test site for innovations at the Köln-Ost motorway junction , Landesbetrieb Straßenbau NRW , accessed on January 31, 2017.
2. ↑ "duraBASt": Innovative test site for road construction opened. (No longer available online.) Straßen.NRW, October 18, 2017, archived from the original on October 18, 2017 ; accessed on October 18, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Manual road traffic census 2005. (PDF) Results on federal motorways. BASt Statistics, 2005, accessed on July 6, 2020 . 
4. ↑ Manual road traffic census 2010. (PDF) Results on federal motorways. BASt Statistics, 2010, accessed on July 6, 2020 . 
5. ↑ Manual road traffic census 2015. (PDF) Results on federal motorways. BASt Statistics, 2015, accessed on January 31, 2017 .