Raftsman Bridge

Raftsman Bridge
	The Flößerbrücke, February 2013
use	Road bridge
Crossing of	Main
place	Sachsenhausen ; city center ; (Main km 36,140)
construction	Rein belt bridge
overall length	221 m
width	34.75 m max. ; 21.21 m min.
Headroom	6.60 m
construction time	1982/84
	location

50.107722222222 8.6948333333333Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 28 ″ N , 8 ° 41 ′ 41 ″ E

The Flößerbrücke is a road bridge over the Main in Frankfurt am Main . At Mainkilometer 36,140 it connects the Obermainanlage in the city center with the Deutschherrnufer in Sachsenhausen . The bridge crosses the Main at an angle of approx. 70 degrees to the river. It is also the only pylon- supported road bridge in downtown Frankfurt.

The first raftsman bridge was built in 1964 as a temporary solution to accommodate traffic during the renovation of the Old Bridge to the west . The current bridge was built from 1984 to 1986.

The Flößerbrücke is a one-way street to the north. Bundesstrasse 3 runs over the bridge .

history

The view from the Flößerbrücke on the skyline has become a landmark of Frankfurt

The reconstruction of the Frankfurt Main Bridges, which had been blown up in March 1945, was largely completed by the early 1950s. Only the old bridge was only provisionally rebuilt in 1947. At the beginning of the 1960s, the narrow, only two-lane temporary bridge, which was limited to a load-bearing capacity of 24 tons, led to increasingly serious traffic congestion in downtown Frankfurt.

In 1963, in preparation for the bridge renovation, another temporary bridge was built over the Main. The Flößerbrücke , a 207 meter long and 10.50 meter wide lattice truss bridge made of steel, was opened to traffic on May 8, 1964 after 13 months of construction. It carried three lanes, which should only accommodate the traffic flowing in a south-north direction from Sachsenhausen into the city center. The pedestrian crossing could be used in both directions.

The provisional raftsman bridge proved itself so that it remained in operation even after the renovation of the old bridge. However, the steel bridge was not very handsome, and its steel river pillars with their relatively small span represented a traffic obstacle for inland shipping.

A new building was therefore planned in the 1980s. The design by the architect Egon Jux was controversial in public, on the one hand because of its asymmetry, on the other hand because of the construction. The Flößerbrücke, built between 1984 and 1986, is the only reinforced concrete stay cable bridge over the Main in the city center. The 21.50 meter high reinforced concrete pylon was viewed by critics as too dominant. In the meantime, the view from the east of the skyline of the city center with the Flößerbrücke in the foreground has developed into a landmark of Frankfurt. The asymmetrical construction also enabled a brief interruption of operations, as the old raftsman bridge was initially continued to be used during the construction period. It had previously been moved a few meters upstream. The ramp of the old bridge was only dismantled shortly before the new raftsman bridge, which was erected in front of the building, reached the southern bank of the Main.

The new Flößerbrücke was opened on October 27, 1986. The construction costs amounted to 47.5 million marks.

The 221 meter long, two-cell prestressed concrete superstructure has four fields with spans of 17.85 meters, 41.75 meters, the stream opening with 106.5 meters and 54.9 meters. The reinforced concrete pylon stands on the northern pillar, where the superstructure has a construction height of 2.2 meters. The northern part of the bridge is supported on each side of the bridge by a prestressed concrete tension member 0.9 meters wide and 1.1 meters high, which is led over the pylon. Due to this type of construction, the bridge type is also called rein belt bridge . On the southern pillar, the superstructure is haunched with a maximum construction height of 5.2 meters .

The bridge has four lanes that are only used in a northerly direction, while traffic in a southerly direction is directed over the Ignatz-Bubis Bridge , which is about 70 meters downstream . There is also a pedestrian walkway on both sides of the bridge.

The former industrial areas east of the Flößerbrücke have been transformed into attractive residential and business districts in recent years

Urban situation

At the time of its new construction in the eighties, the Flößerbrücke formed a transition between the densely built-up areas of the city center or Sachsenhausen and the industrial areas to the east of it. The slaughterhouse area began at the southern bridgehead on Deutschherrnufer . In 1988 the old slaughterhouse was replaced by a new building, which only remained in operation for a few years. In 1996 the redesign of the former slaughterhouse began. The Deutschherrnviertel has now emerged here .

On the northern bank of the Main, upstream of the Flößerbrücke, is the Weseler Werft , a former transshipment point for building materials delivered by inland waterway . The Weseler shipyard was redesigned into a green area between 2000 and 2005. Some former harbor cranes have been preserved as technical architectural monuments. Today they are part of the Rhine-Main Industrial Culture Route .

Tuesday night skating

The Flößerbrücke at Night (2008)

From 1997 to 2013 the Deutschherrnufer at the southern bridgehead of the Flößerbrücke was the meeting point for Tuesday Night Skating . Initially a private event, the meeting has been organized by the city since 1999 in order to control the crowds and ensure traffic safety. Every Tuesday at 8.30 p.m., an average of around 1,000 skaters go on a tour through the city center. In the early years the tour was around 30 to 40 kilometers long, but has now been shortened to around 25 kilometers. Because of the large number of participants and the high speed on the route, only experienced runners are allowed. Originally due to extensive renovation work, the meeting point was moved to the Hafenpark for the 2014 season and has remained there ever since.

literature

Wolfram Gorr: Frankfurt bridges. Locks, ferries, tunnels and bridges of the Main. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-7973-0393-9 .
Herbert Schambeck: The Flößerbrücke in Frankfurt. In: civil engineer. Vol. 62, No. 4, 1987, ISSN 0005-6650 , pp. 151-157.
Wolf-Christian Setzepfandt : Architecture Guide Frankfurt am Main / Architectural Guide . 3. Edition. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-496-01236-6 , p. 70 (German, English).

Web links

Commons : Flößerbrücke - collection of images, videos and audio files

The Flößerbrücke ( Memento from June 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
Flößerbrücke ( memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) at brueckenweb.de

Individual evidence

^ Herbert Schambeck: The Flößerbrücke in Frankfurt. In: civil engineer. Vol. 62, No. 4, 1987, p. 151.
↑ ^a ^b Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration: Route Atlas Main I. (PDF 11 MB) (No longer available online.) 2010, p. 41 , archived from the original on January 14, 2015 ; Retrieved January 18, 2015 .
^ Herbert Schambeck: The Flößerbrücke in Frankfurt. In: civil engineer. Vol. 62, No. 4, 1987, pp. 151-157.
↑ TNS Frankfurt | Meeting point & start. Retrieved August 28, 2018 .

[1] Herbert Schambeck: The Flößerbrücke in Frankfurt. In: civil engineer. Vol. 62, No. 4, 1987, p. 151.

[wsv1-2] Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration: Route Atlas Main I. (PDF 11 MB) (No longer available online.) 2010, p. 41 , archived from the original on January 14, 2015 ; Retrieved January 18, 2015 .

[3] Herbert Schambeck: The Flößerbrücke in Frankfurt. In: civil engineer. Vol. 62, No. 4, 1987, pp. 151-157.

[4] TNS Frankfurt | Meeting point & start. Retrieved August 28, 2018 .