Waal bridge Nijmegen

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Coordinates: 51 ° 51 ′ 6 ″  N , 5 ° 52 ′ 16 ″  E

N325 Waalbrug Nijmegen
Waalbrug Nijmegen
Convicted Provinciale Weg 325,
bicycle and pedestrian route
Crossing of Waal
place Nijmegen
Entertained by Gelderland Province
construction Arch bridge
overall length 604 m
width 23.50 m
Longest span 244.10 m
height 65 m
Headroom 24.77 m (for ships)
vehicles per day 50,000
start of building October 23, 1931
opening June 16, 1936
planner P. Stelling, AJ van der Steur, WJH Harmsen (Bruggenbureau Rijkswaterstaat )
location
Waal bridge Nijmegen (Gelderland)
Waal bridge Nijmegen
Bridge: de (Verlengde) Waalbrug and de Lenteloper

The Waal Bridge Nijmegen ( Dutch Waalbrug Nijmegen ) spans the Waal , the southern arm of the Rhine in the Rhine-Maas Delta , in the Dutch city ​​of Nijmegen . The road bridge connects the center with the Lent district on the north bank of the river. Provinciale Weg N325 runs on the structure, which was built between 1931 and 1936, and leads north to Arnhem and south from the border as federal road 9 to Kleve . The bridge is located at kilometer 25.67 of the Dutch waterway 101 (Rhine-Waal- Boven-Merwede -Beneden -Merwede - Noord ) (Rhine kilometer 883.50). The next bridge upstream is the Emmerich Rhine Bridge, about 30 kilometers away . The next road bridge downstream is De Oversteek, about two kilometers to the west .

Technical specifications

The steel arch bridge has a total length of 604 meters and is 65 meters high in the middle. The truss arches are 12 meters wide, while the deck slab is 23.5 meters wide. The arch of the river bridge, to which the roadway below is attached with hangers, rests on two river pillars without a tie . The span of the main bridge is 244.1 meters. When it opened, it was the largest span of an arch bridge in Europe. The four approach bridges, of which the middle one spans 72 and the outer 95 meters, were constructed with the carriageway overhead. The total of four pillars taper towards the top. They are longer than the width of the carriageway in them and have semicircular, tower-shaped platforms at their ends. All pillars are clad with dark, roughly hewn stone blocks. At both ends, the structure is completed with two concrete arches as abutments . In order to lead a bus lane over the bridge, the carriageway was widened by 1.30 meters on the west side. As a result, the tower platforms there were lost. The original railings are also no longer there. The color of the main arch was originally green, since 1980 it has been painted white. Due to its architectural and cultural-historical importance, the Waal Bridge was declared a Rijksmonument (No. 523067).

history

View of the Valkhofburg and the Waal near Nijmegen with the ferry, painting (1641) by Jan van Goyen
British soldiers removing the explosives from the bridge railing on September 20, 1944
That destroyed Nijmegen and the bridge on September 28, 1944
West side of the Waal Bridge
The Waal Bridge at night

Until 1936 there was no fixed connection for road traffic over the Waal in Nijmegen. Instead, a ferry has always been used to cross the river , which later bore the name Zeldenrust . A railway bridge was opened further downstream in 1879 for rail traffic on the Arnhem – Nijmegen railway line. From 1906 the Nijmegen Vooruit Committee (German Nijmegen vorwärts ) planned to build a road bridge over the Waal. After the outbreak of the First World War , however, it was no longer built. The planning of a Waal bridge in Nijmegen was resumed at the end of the 1920s by the Bruggenbureau Rijkswaterstaat . The planning office, subordinate to the Dutch Ministry of Transport, was founded to promote the construction of road bridges over the major rivers of the Rhine-Meuse Delta.

The design of the Waal Bridge was based on the model of Dutch and German steel arch bridges under the direction of the engineer P. Stelling in collaboration with the architect G. Schoorl and the chief engineer WJH Harmsen. The Dutch mechanical engineering company Werkspoor took on the assembly of the construction. Construction of the bridge began on October 23, 1931. On June 16, 1936, the building was inaugurated by Queen Wilhelmina in the presence of 200,000 spectators. A bench designed by Charles Estourgie was inaugurated during the celebrations in the nearby Hunnerpark in honor of the photographer and entrepreneur CAP Ivens, who had worked hard to build the bridge beforehand.

During the Second World War , the bridge played an important strategic role several times. When the Wehrmacht attacked the Netherlands in May 1940, the main arch was blown up by the Dutch military . The bridge was then repaired by the German occupiers so that it could be used again from 1943. When the Wehrmacht withdrew during Operation Market Garden , the bridge was supposed to be blown up again. According to popular tradition, this was prevented by the Dutch resistance fighter Jan van Hoof by rendering the explosive charges unusable. However, a commission set up in 1951 concluded that some of the explosive charges were still intact when British troops captured the bridge on September 20, 1944. It is therefore assumed that the Wehrmacht ultimately did not want to blow up the bridge in order to be able to use it in the event of a possible counter-offensive. A plaque attached to a pillar railing of the bridge commemorates the resistance fighter van Hoof.

The bridge is still one of the most important crossings of the Waal. A traffic survey in 2005 showed that more than 50,000 vehicles roll over the structure every day. Long traffic jams form several times a day on the bridge. To relieve traffic, a western bypass road with another Rhine bridge ( De Oversteek ) was built and opened in November 2013.

From February 2018 to the end of 2019, the bridge will undergo the renovation that has long since been due. It is to be given a light gray paintwork and nighttime illumination with colored LEDs . In addition, the bus lane on the western side outside the bridge girder is to be converted into a cycle path.

additional

The Nijmegen Waal Bridge can be seen in several scenes in the film Die Brücke von Arnheim, produced in 1977, and in the computer games Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and Medal of Honor: Frontline . Also on the map "Bent Steel" in the multiplayer mode of the computer game Battlefield 5 you play in the area around or on the Waal Bridge. On July 15, 2006, a protester from the Fathers For Justice organization climbed onto the bridge. On October 2, 2008, an asylum seeker climbed the building to protest his deportation. In both cases, the bridge was temporarily closed, which resulted in several traffic jams in the area.

See also

literature

  • GC Boonstra: Les fondations du pont-route de Nimègue, sur le Waal (Hollande). In: La Technique des Travaux. May 1936

Web links

Commons : Waalbrücke Nijmegen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rijkswaterstaat, Rijkswaterstaat, Rijkswaterstaat: Waal: Renovatie Waalbrug. Retrieved January 21, 2018 (nl-nl).