Bundesstrasse 178

	Template: Infobox high-ranking street / Maintenance / DE-B
	Bundesstrasse 178 in Germany
	map
	Basic data
Operator:	Federal Republic of Germany
Start of the street:	Weißenberg ; ( 51 ° 10 ′ N , 14 ° 39 ′ E )
End of street:	Zittau ; ( 50 ° 54 ′ N , 14 ° 50 ′ E )
Overall length:	41.6 km
of which in operation:	30.6 km
of which under construction:	0 km
of which in planning:	11 km
State :	Saxony
Development condition:	see below
	Bundesstrasse 178 near Löbau

The federal road 178 (abbreviation: B 178 ) is a motorway-like federal road in eastern Saxony . It runs for 42.5 km from the A4 near Weißenberg via Löbau to the border triangle between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic to Zittau . The re-routing and extension has been taking place since 2000. When fully developed, it connects the German motorway network with the roads of the Ústí and Liberec regions and the Lower Silesian Voivodeship . Currently the section from Niederoderwitz to Oberseifersdorf bei Zittau is still on the old route.

history

The "High Heer- und Landstrasse" was expanded in 1826–1827. Of the road houses built at that time, only the one next to the tavern near Oberseifersdorf remains today. The number 178 was assigned in the second phase of the numbering around the year 1937.

As early as 1939, the expansion of individual sections of the route to the Sudeten motorway Görlitz - Zittau - Reichenberg - Eger began. Between Zittau and Reichenberg in Bohemia (Liberec in Czech), individual sections of this route have been integrated into the road network. After the end of the war, Czechoslovakia did not continue the construction work . Only after the reunification of Germany was thought about starting construction work for the so-called federal motorways 17 (Bautzen – Zittau) and 18 (Cottbus – Görlitz – Zittau). Due to the newly drawn state borders after 1945 and also for cost reasons, these plans were discarded. The federal highway 178 should therefore be re-routed as a replacement. At the EU expansion ceremony on May 1, 2004 in the border triangle of Zittau, the heads of state of Germany , the Czech Republic and Poland carried out a symbolic test drill on the planned German-Polish-Czech route.

Planning (B 178n) and construction

The current federal transport infrastructure plan from 2003 stipulates that the federal highway 178 should be completely rebuilt as the B 178n and connected to the Polish and Czech road network. Completion was originally planned for 2008. The old B 178 is then downgraded to Kreisstraße 8610 (K 8610) and the B 178n is renamed B 178. The new route will run in the north from Weißenberg at the connection to the federal motorway 4 via Löbau and Zittau to the south-east to the Czech motorway D 35 towards Liberec (Reichenberg) and D 10 to Prague .

The project to build the B 178 was divided into five main and five sub-sections:

No.	section	length	(Planning) status
1.1	to Nostitz S 112	5.1 km	Plan approval procedure
1.2	Nostitz S 112 to Löbau	6.3 km	Traffic was opened in 2008
2	Löbau bypass to S 148	4.1 km	Traffic was opened in 2001
3.1	Löbau S 148 to Obercunnersdorf S 143	5.9 km	Traffic was opened in 2010
3.2	Obercunnersdorf S 143 to Niederoderwitz S 128	10.2 km	Traffic was opened in 2013
3.3	Niederoderwitz S 128 to Oberseifersdorf (old)	5.9 km	Plan approval procedure
4th	North bypass Zittau (old) S 132 bis	4.1 km	Traffic was opened in 2000
5	to the federal border D – PL	0.9 km	Traffic was opened in 2013

First of all, the Löbau and Zittau bypasses were completed. On October 23, 2008 the 6.3 km long Löbau– Nostitz section was opened to traffic as a four-lane road and on November 22, 2010 the 5.9 km long Löbau– Obercunnersdorf section was opened as a 2 + 1 system . The 10.2 km long section Obercunnersdorf-Niederoderwitz was opened to traffic on December 20, 2013.

Of the 42.5 km of the overall project, 31.5 km are now continuously passable, 10.4 km of which are four-lane. The 0.9 km long section from Zittau ( B 99 ) to the border river Neisse, which was released on June 1, 2013 after the border bridge was built by the Polish side, is also complete. This means that around three quarters of the new building project has been completed. The plan approval procedures are only ongoing for Sections 1.1 and 3.3.

Between the federal autobahn 4 and Löbau-Süd the road will have four lanes , and between Löbau-Süd and the federal border it will be developed as a federal road with longer overtaking sections according to the 2 + 1 system . It is assumed that the new federal highway 178 will establish itself next to the A 17 (Dresden – Prague) as the second important north-south connection between Germany and the Czech Republic, as it will be developed almost entirely like a motorway between the A 4 and Prague.

A special feature is the connection to the Czech D 35 at Hrádek nad Nisou (Grottau) not far from Zittau. Here the road runs over a length of about 3 kilometers over Polish territory. According to the tri-national agreement of April 5, 2004, Germany and the Czech Republic took over the financing of the short Polish section.

Beginning of the B 178 at the border bridge over the Neisse.

B 178 near the Löbau Süd junction. In the foreground the old B 178

The originally planned construction of border clearance systems for Zittau - Sieniawka (Kleinschönau) (D - PL) and Kopaczów - Oldřichov na Hranicích (Oberullersdorf - Ullersdorf) (PL - CZ) was no longer implemented due to the accession of the Czech Republic and Poland to the Schengen Agreement .

The construction is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). In the funding period 2000–2006, 19.3 million euros flowed into section 1.2. A further 15 million euros were approved for section 3.1 in the 2007–2013 funding period. ERDF funding should also be applied for for other construction phases.

Tourist information boards

Along the four-lane B 178 in November 2010, Tourist Under signposts to Haus Schminke by Hans Scharoun and cast iron tower erected. It was the first of its kind that were approved after the changes to the guidelines for tourist signage on a motorway-like federal road in the Free State of Saxony published at the beginning of 2009.

Tourist information board Haus Schminke
Tourist information board Cast iron tower

State of development

In the course of the expansion of the B 178, the expansion status is broken down as follows:

section	Stripes	Dividing strip	Perm. Top speed	comment
S 112 AS Nostitz - S 115 AS Löbau-Süd	4th	Yes	130 km / h	motorway-like motor vehicle road
S 115 AS Löbau-Süd - S 143 AS Niederoderwitz	3	No	100 km / h	Motorway in the 2 + 1 system
S 143 AS Niederoderwitz - S 132 AS Oberseifersdorf	2	No	80, 100 km / h	old route, country road
S 132 AS Oberseifersdorf -Zittau border bridge	3	No	100 km / h	Motorway in the 2 + 1 system

Disputes about further expansion

The further expansion of the B 178 near Weißenberg has repeatedly led to violent protests in the region. According to the initial planning, a four-lane expansion of the federal road between Löbau and the A 4 was planned. However, since more recent forecasts assume a falling traffic volume by 2025, an expansion with four lanes is no longer worthwhile. Instead, the last section up to the A4 should be implemented with three lanes in the 2 + 1 system. This fact and the massive delay in the schedule led to heated controversy among the population. The final planning phase has not yet been completed.

Web links

Commons : Bundesstrasse 178 - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Traffic - B 178 New construction of the federal road between the A 4 and the triangle (map). Retrieved February 23, 2018 .

↑ Approvals EU Commission . In: verNETZt - information sheet on the Operational Program for Transport EFRE Federal Government 2007–2013 . No. 1 , 2010, p. 2 ( online PDF [accessed October 2, 2012]). online PDF ( Memento from December 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive )

↑ http://www.medienservice.sachsen.de/medien/news/156831

↑ Three or four tracks? In: sächsische.de . March 17, 2015 ( sächsische.de [accessed November 23, 2018]).

^ Jana Ulbrich: New planning round for the B 178 . In: sächsische.de . December 13, 2017 ( sächsische.de [accessed November 23, 2018]).

[1] Traffic - B 178 New construction of the federal road between the A 4 and the triangle (map). Retrieved February 23, 2018 .