Federal motorway 656
| Bundesautobahn 656 in Germany | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Basic data | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Operator: |
 Federal Republic of Germany
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| Start of the street: |
Mannheim ( 49 ° 28 ′ N , 8 ° 31 ′ E ) |
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| End of street: |
Heidelberg ( 49 ° 25 ′ N , 8 ° 39 ′ E ) |
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| Overall length: | 11.5 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Development condition: | 2 × 2 lanes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Direction Mannheim, Mannheimer Kreuz | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Course of the road
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Map with all coordinates: The Federal Highway 656 (abbreviation: BAB 656 ) - Short Form: Highway 656 (abbreviation: A 656 ) - leads from the junction Mannheim-Neckarau until the motorway junction Heidelberg . The length is 11.5 km. The original route length was 14.8 km from 1935 to 1990.
history
Planning for a motorway between Mannheim and Heidelberg began as early as 1926. From 1924, the Study Society for Automobile Road Construction (Stufa) began planning a national "road network". In 1926, the “Association for the Construction of a Road for High-Speed Motor Vehicle Traffic from Hamburg via Frankfurt a. M. nach Basel ”( HaFraBa for short ), who carried out the most extensive planning before 1933.
But regional interest groups also planned motorways to connect individual cities: In 1930, the plans of the respective cities for the connection to the Hafraba were presented in several summary articles with the subtitle "Cities on Hafrabastraßen" in the "Hafraba-Mitteilungsblatt". These included detailed articles by Josef F. Amberger (Heidelberg) and Adolf Elsaesser (City Planning Director Mannheim) on the "Motorway Mannheim-Heidelberg", which for the first time also described an "intersection-free diversion" (a motorway triangle ).
On March 21, 1934, after the so-called “labor battle” had been initiated for the Munich-Salzburg route in Unterhaching near Munich, ground-breaking ceremonies were held at 22 construction sites to begin construction of Reichsautobahn routes, including Heidelberg-Mannheim. The route was opened as a Reichsautobahn in 1935 and originally extended from Mannheim-Mitte (today Europaplatz with Planetarium Mannheim ) to Heidelberg-Bergheimer Straße . The builder was the Nordbadische Autostraßen-Gesellschaft.
A special design feature of the motorway section was the former Mannheim city entrance. It was designed in different planning stages as a representative driveway with a well system. Some of the planned construction phases were started and implemented up to the Second World War. Some of the measures can still be seen today. The fountain sculptures by the sculptor Bernhard Bleeker were completed, but never got to their destination.
In 1982 there was a tragic accident when a helicopter full of parachutists crashed onto the autobahn at the International Mannheim Airship Days at the Mannheim-Neckarau junction and 46 people died.
With effect from January 1, 1988, the Mannheim end section was downgraded to 1.2 km to federal highway 37 , 10 years later with effect from May 1, 1998 the Heidelberg end section was downgraded to just under 2 km, so that now the autobahn is only from the junction Mannheim-Neckarau to the Heidelberg motorway junction (both inclusive) is enough. A speed monitoring system is located between the Heidelberg-Wieblingen driveway and the end of the B 37 in Heidelberg , which monitors the maximum speed of 70 km / h.
The old bridges over the A 656 between the Heidelberg and Mannheim-Seckenheim motorway junction, which were largely in their original condition, were demolished between around 2004 and 2007. This also created space for hard shoulder in the area of the former bridges. The last original bridge now leads over the B 37 shortly before its end in Heidelberg.
Former service area
Another special feature of the Reichsautobahn was the service area built between 1938 and 1939 , with a covered forecourt and petrol station as well as its own entrance and exit, which was located between the Mannheim-Seckenheim junction (formerly Mannheim-Ost) and the Mannheim triangle (now the Mannheim motorway junction ). The facility included one of the six road maintenance depots in Baden-Württemberg in order to ensure traffic safety on the new autobahns regardless of the season from 1937 onwards. After 1945 the area was confiscated by the US Army and used as a gas station for Americans. The northern part, called "Autobahn Kaserne", served from 1951 to 1958 as a base for the US Military Police's Autobahn department ("Highway Patrol"). Since the late 1960s, a central command unit for law enforcement, the " Criminal Investigations Command " (CID), was stationed there. From 1988 the part was named "Stem Kaserne" in honor of Brigadier General David H. Stem, who was killed in an accident at work.
There was brisk traffic between the cities of Mannheim and Heidelberg because the European headquarters of the US armed forces were located here. A new motorway service station was then built on the opposite side. After the section of the A 6 between Mannheimer and Walldorfer Kreuz and the A 5 between Darmstädter and Heidelberger Kreuz had been completed, long-distance traffic on the A 656 slowed down significantly, so that the service area was closed. Parts of the area with the listed gas station are currently being used by the road maintenance department, while other parts have been managed by the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks (BImA) since 2010 for development as part of the conversion . The southern part, which is also a listed building, had been used by Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe and the technical relief organization since the 1980s .
expansion
Due to the fact that there was still sufficient line capacity, the six-lane expansion was postponed and may be taken into account in future updates to the federal transport route plan. In the medium term, the continuous creation of hard shoulders will initially be pursued.
From August 2016 to the end of 2020, construction work will be carried out to renew the bridge from 1935 over the tracks at Neu-Edingen / Friedrichsfeld station and another bridge over a length of approx. 870 meters. The objectives of the measures are better visibility, widening of the carriageway by arranging hard shoulder on both sides, adjusting the transverse slope and improving noise protection. With the new structure, the clear passage height on the railway line will be increased from 5.70 m to 6.20 m, and the gradient of the A 656 will be raised by up to 1.50 m.
literature
- Klaus Schefold, Alois Neher (Ed.): 50 years of motorways in Baden-Württemberg. A documentation. On behalf of the Autobahn Office Baden-Württemberg. Baden-Württemberg motorway office, Stuttgart 1986.
Web links
- Detailed route description of the federal highway 656
- History of the Autobahn in Germany and other countries that are important for the development of the Autobahn ( Memento from October 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ MARCHIVUM : Chronicle star . September 7, 1926, accessed September 27, 2018 .
- ↑ http://www.vahrenkamp.org/hafraba/hafraba.html
- ↑ Peter Liptau: The city entrances of the Reichsautobahn - A consideration using the example of Mannheim. Master's thesis at the State University for Design Karlsruhe, 2013.
- ↑ Announcement of the Ministry of the Interior of December 16, 1987, Az .: 10-213 / 285, State Gazette for Baden-Württemberg of December 30, 1987
- ↑ Announcement of the State Office for Roads Baden-Württemberg from February 4, 1998, Az .: 3-A 656 / B37-AS Heidelb./Wiebl.-3911.14/96, State Gazette for Baden-Württemberg from February 16, 1998
- ↑ Rhein-Neckar industrial culture: motorway filling stations with road maintenance in Mannheim-Seckenheim / Friedrichsfeld. Retrieved December 7, 2014 .
- ↑ Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Baden-Württemberg: Hearing on the registration list for the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2015. (PDF 828 kB) No. 3.4 A 656, expansion between Mannheim and Heidelberg. September 13, 2013, p. 33 , accessed on August 28, 2019 .
- ^ A 656, Renewal of the Deutsche Bahn and Schwabenstrasse bridges in the area of the Mannheim-Friedrichsfeld train station. Karlsruhe Regional Council, accessed on April 9, 2019 .
