Rhine bridges Maxau
Coordinates: 49 ° 2 ′ 13 ″ N , 8 ° 18 ′ 12 ″ E
 Rhine bridge Maxau (road bridge)
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| use | Road bridge, 6 lanes; Pedestrian and bike paths | |
| Convicted | Bundesstrasse 10 | |
| Crossing of | Rhine | |
| place | Karlsruhe , Wörth am Rhein | |
| construction | Cable-stayed bridge | |
| overall length | 292 m | |
| width | 36.3 m | |
| Longest span | 175 m and 117 m | |
| Construction height | 3 m | |
| height | 48 m | |
| vehicles per day | 78500 | |
| opening | December 1966 | |
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The Rhine bridges in Maxau provide the road and rail traffic connection between the Baden-Württemberg city of Karlsruhe and the Rhineland-Palatinate city of Wörth . You cross the Rhine at the hamlet of Maxau in the Karlsruhe district of Knielingen and the Wörther district of Maximiliansau . It is named after the Hofgut Maxau on the right bank of the Rhine not far from the bridge . Today there are two parallel bridge structures for road and rail traffic.
Today's plant
Road bridge
Bundesstrasse 10 crosses the Rhine on the road bridge . It combines the most Woerth junction ending Highway 65 with a Südtangente designated Karlsruhe city highway that connect to Highway 5 makes. According to a survey from the first half of 2005, around 78,500 vehicles cross the bridge on workdays. It has therefore been a traffic bottleneck for years.
The building, designed by Wilhelm Tiedje from an architectural point of view, is designed as a 292 m long cable-stayed bridge. The 48 meter high pylon rests on a central pillar that asymmetrically divides the bridge into two fields 175 meters and 117 meters long. The steel bridge superstructure has a construction height of 3.00 meters and, with a width of 36.30 meters, accommodates two three-lane lanes as well as footpaths and cycle paths on both sides. The road bridge was opened in December 1966.
Railway bridge
| Rhine bridge Maxau (railway bridge) | |
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| use | Railway bridge, 2-track |
| Convicted | Railway line Winden – Karlsruhe |
| Crossing of | Rhine |
| place | Wörth am Rhein , Karlsruhe |
| construction | Steel truss bridge |
| opening | April 29, 1991 (1st track), May 12, 2000 (2nd track) |
The double-track railway bridge on the Winden – Karlsruhe line runs a few meters south of the road bridge .
The railway bridge consists of two identical, each 292 meters long, welded superstructures in steel framework construction, which rest on a common central pillar. The postless strut framework structures have a system height of 12.00 meters and have the continuous beam as a building system in the longitudinal direction . As with the road bridge, the pillar divides the bridge asymmetrically into two fields of 117 meters and 175 meters in length.
Even before the accident of June 9, 1987, there was a discussion about whether the railway line in the area of the bridge should have one or two tracks. The German Federal Railroad assumed that a single-track structure would also be sufficient with future traffic growth, while the regional association , the district , the planning community for the southern Palatinate and the city of Karlsruhe demanded a double-track bridge. The Karlsruhe transport company planned to use light rail vehicles every 20 or even 10 minutes, and in March 1987 they wished that the bridge would at least be designed for later expansion, which would be more expensive than a double-track bridge, but cheaper than two single-track bridges. At the suggestion of the Lord Mayor of Karlsruhe, the Ministry of the Interior of Baden-Württemberg applied to the Federal Ministry of Transport for funding under the Municipal Transport Financing Act for the additional costs of the second track amounting to around 15 million German marks , which the DB did not want to take over. However, the Federal Ministry of Transport shared the view of DB that only one half-hourly tram, one hourly regional train and one freight train per hour could be expected in each direction, and that a single-track bridge would be sufficient for this.
Ultimately, the compromise proposed by the VBK was implemented, whereby the additional costs compared to the single-track bridge, which cost around 29 million German marks, had to be borne by the VBK. The structure was opened as a single-track bridge on April 29, 1991, and a second track was added in 2000 with a further superstructure and put into operation on May 12, 2000.
Precursor bridges
Today's bridges near Maxau are the fifth and sixth structures at this location since the first crossing of the Rhine was built in 1840.
Ship bridge from 1840
This first Rhine bridge near Maxau was a ship bridge opened for road traffic on August 25, 1840 . It consisted of 34 hulls that floated on the Rhine and on which track yokes were mounted. It had a length of 276 m and a load capacity of 4 t. To clear the passage of ships and rafts, individual lane segments could be extended.
Pontoon bridge from 1865
Construction of maxau railway in 1862 made it necessary to build a new bridge for the railway, which the maxau railway Karlsruhe-Maxau with a newly created branch line of the " Palatine Maximiliansbahn joined" Morning Wörth-Maximiliansau. For the first time in Europe, this mixed rail and road bridge was designed as a ship bridge. As a technical pioneering achievement, it was awarded a gold medal at the Paris World Exhibition in 1867 . The new bridge replaced the structure from 1840. Until the Germersheimer Rhine crossing took over the goods traffic in 1877, considerable amounts of coal from the Saar had to be brought to southern Germany here across the Rhine.
This structure had a total length of 363 m, of which 234 m was accounted for by the actual bridge and 129 m for the two access ramps. It consisted of 34 pontoons on which 12 track yokes were mounted. Six of the track bays could be extended for the passage of ships. The track was divided into two lanes by the central track of the railway.
Depending on the water level of the Rhine, the height of the bridge compared to the bank varied, which also changed the incline of the bridge approach: When the water was low, the bridge was lower than the bank, so that the trains had to overcome a maximum gradient of 3.5% at the bridge approach; on the other hand, the bridge was higher than the bank at high tide, so that a maximum gradient of 3.3% had to be overcome on the driveways. The low load-bearing capacity of the bridge of 101 t required the use of special, particularly light-weight locomotives, the bridge locomotives with a net weight of 22 t . Trains with a maximum of 5 wagons that were supposed to cross the bridge were taken over by such a bridge locomotive on one bank, transported across the Rhine and returned to a normal locomotive on the other bank. Since the bridge locomotives only had a low output, problems could arise, especially at low tide, when the bridge locomotives did not manage to pull the train from the bridge over the steep bridge ramps up to the bank. During such a crossing the bridge was closed to traffic for about 2 hours. In the 1925 timetable, there were 5 continuous pairs of trains.
In the event of ice on the Rhine, the ship bridge had to be dismantled for safety reasons and towed into the port.
Rhine bridge from 1938
The technical and operational inadequacies of the ship bridge - hindrance to shipping, low load-bearing capacity and complex operational management - led to the construction of the first permanent bridge near Maxau in the 1930s. The inauguration of the new structure was celebrated on January 17, 1938 (road bridge) and April 3, 1938 (railway bridge). The bridge had a central pillar that divided the structure into two bridge fields of 175 m and 117 m in length. It had two superstructures in steel framework construction: a superstructure that accommodated the double-track railway line, and a superstructure for the road. The official name of the bridge was Karlsruhe Rhine Bridge .
The new Rhine bridge was damaged in bombing raids in 1945 at the end of the Second World War . On March 21, 1945, an American artillery shell hit a detonator and triggered the demolition of the bridge prepared by the Germans (see Operation Undertone ).
Rhine bridge from 1947
After the building was destroyed in 1938, several short-term temporary arrangements were initially made in Maxau, initially in the form of a pontoon bridge for road traffic built by the French armed forces. This was replaced after a short time by another pontoon bridge that was built a little upstream. In 1946 a low wooden bridge for rail traffic was added, which created a connection between the two banks at the level of the old ship bridge from 1865. However, it was not passable for shipping on the Rhine. These temporary bridges remained in operation until the structure was commissioned in 1947.
As a long-term replacement for the structure destroyed in 1945, a new bridge was built south of the previous location after the end of the war. It was founded on four river pillars, which were supported on a large number of steel pipes driven into the ground. Steel superstructures in half-timbered construction took up a railroad track and the tramway. As a long-term provisional solution, this bridge was planned for around 20 years. It was inaugurated on May 13, 1947. After the construction of the new road bridge in 1966, the superstructures for the tramway were omitted, and until 1991 only the superstructures for the railroad remained.
The bridge was divided into five fields by the four pillars, with one field each being available for the passage of ships going uphill and downhill.
The rather narrow passage width of the bridge fields of 55 meters soon developed into an obstacle for shipping. As occurred on 9 June 1987 a serious shipping accident in which a downhill propelled barge train rammed one of the bridge piers and tilted on the pillars of the bridge; a vehicle sank. Until the ship was recovered and the subsequent stability test of the bridge was carried out, both rail traffic on the bridge and shipping on the Rhine had to be interrupted for several weeks.
New building plans
For several years there have been plans to build a second road bridge over the Rhine near Maxau. The reasons given are, on the one hand, the increase in traffic and, on the other hand, the expected need for renovation of the existing cable-stayed bridge from 1966, which would require the bridge to be closed for a longer period of time. Therefore, according to plans , the renovation should be combined with the previous construction of a second Rhine bridge.
In the regional planning procedure , which was completed in June 2006, a variant I a few kilometers further north of the previous bridge location and a variant II in the immediate vicinity of the previous bridge were examined. The spatial planning decision of the Structural and Approval Directorate South in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse favored a modified variant I : The connection to the B 9 in the west is to be partly carried out via the route of today's Kreisstrasse 25 (Wörther Hafenstrasse). A small forest area is to be crossed on low stilts in order to preserve existing wildlife passages and biotopes.
The traffic routing on the Palatinate side is problematic with both variants because of the dense settlement up to the Rhine: The driveway to variant II would have to be led as an elevated road over the residential area of Maximiliansau. For the connection of variant I to the west, there are two proposals by the Rhineland-Palatinate State Mobility Office and one that has been developed by a citizens' initiative . The continuation of the planned northern bypass and the connection to the existing southern bypass are also controversially discussed .
As of April 26, 2011, the plans for the planning approval were laid out. On May 24, 2011, a majority of the Karlsruhe municipal council decided to issue a negative opinion on the planning. An alliance of around 30 nature conservation associations and civic associations from Karlsruhe and the southern Palatinate rejects the plan and saw more than 100 serious deficiencies, even supporters are calling for improvements. On the other hand, an action alliance called “Pro Ersatzbrücke Maxau” calls for the old bridge to be replaced by a new one. After the state elections, the two new state governments agreed to carry out a fact check on November 18 and 22, 2011 in Karlsruhe and then to set up a working group on “Efficient Rhine Crossing”, which concluded its work in November 2012, to clarify open questions and resolve information deficits. Both results were published on the Internet.
The hearing for the Rhineland-Palatinate plan approval procedure took place on July 3 and 4, 2013 in Wörth, and for the Baden-Württemberg procedure on July 9, 10 and 11, 2013 in Karlsruhe. The city of Karlsruhe and the nature conservation associations criticized the numerous deficiencies in nature conservation, the problems with capacity and traffic safety on the Baden side that could not be resolved due to the additional bridge, disadvantages for cycling, the inadequate weighing of options and the division into two procedures with insufficient overall consideration of traffic and traffic Conservation problems. The proponents cited the unbundling of traffic on the Palatinate side with increased capacity and traffic safety and the reliability of the Rhine crossing in the event of accidents involving car or ship traffic. One day before the discussion, Federal Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer visited the bridge and described it as “Germany's worst bottleneck”.
The states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate have registered the construction of a second Rhine bridge as the B 293 . Baden-Württemberg has also registered a replacement bridge in the course of the B 10 for the federal traffic route plan. An investigation by the State Office for Mobility Speyer following a request from Baden-Württemberg showed that a new bridge between the old Rhine bridge and the railway bridge was structurally not possible. In addition, this variant would have shown natural requirements on the Baden-Württemberg side.
"According to the current state of knowledge, the Federal Audit Office does not consider the construction of a second Rhine bridge to be either necessary or economical."
literature
- Wolfgang Kunz: Palatinate railway bridges over the Rhine . In: Yearbook for Railway History n48 (2017/2018), pp. 13–24 (13–17).
- Schaper: The two new Rhine bridges at Maxau and Speyer. In: Newspaper of the Association of Central European Railway Administrations, Volume 78, No. 34 (August 25, 1938), pp. 635–640.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Jochen Allgeier: The emergence of the Karlsruhe light rail system 1957 to 2004 . Karlsruhe February 6, 2013, 5.3.1 "The S5 (West) Karlsruhe - Wörth line", p. 515-518 ( kit.edu [PDF; 38.8 MB ]).
- ^ Albert Mühl: The Pfalzbahn. Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-8062-0301-6 , p. 12.
- ^ Ritzau: Reich Course Book July 1925, reprint 2nd edition 1987 Ritzau Verlag Pürgen ISBN 3-921304-71-7 timetable field 257
- ↑ Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Official Gazette of the Reichsbahndirektion Mainz of April 9, 1938, No. 18. Announcement No. 238, p. 101.
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↑ a b c Erik Bostert: History of the Rhine Bridge Maximiliansau (past to present) - the second permanent bridge, also known as the Franzosenbrücke. Archived from the original on July 3, 2007 ; Retrieved September 13, 2017 (
.whiteremove CSS class ). - ↑ Plan approval documents for Rhineland-Palatinate ( memento from March 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) and plan approval documents for Baden-Württemberg (accessed on July 17, 2011)
- ↑ "Alliance discovers over 100 deficiencies" at ka-news , BUND page with joint statement
- ↑ Report at ka-news
- ↑ website
- ↑ Website of the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Transport with the results
- ↑ Article at ka-news from July 9th and July 11th 2013, accessed July 13th 2013
- ↑ ka-news article from July 2, 2013 , accessed on July 13, 2013
- ^ Project registrations on federal highways in Rhineland-Palatinate ( memento from December 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Ministry of the Interior, for Sport and Infrastructure Rhineland-Palatinate, accessed on June 29, 2014.
- ↑ Baden-Württemberg list of measures, as of October 2013 ( Memento from May 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Baden-Württemberg, accessed on June 29, 2014.
- ↑ Kern: State has done homework for Wörther Rheinbrücke , press release of the Ministry of the Interior, for Sport and Infrastructure Rhineland-Palatinate from October 29, 2015, accessed on November 29, 2015
- ↑ Examination result of the BRH on the Rhine Bridge from April 24, 2015
Web links
- The Rhine bridges in the Karlsruhe city wiki
- Rhine bridges Maxau. In: Structurae (road bridge)
- Rhine bridges Maxau. In: Structurae (railway bridge)
- Road bridge in the bridge web
- Railway bridge in the bridge web
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Bridges over the Rhine |
The next bridge downstream: Germersheim railway bridge |