Zoo bridge

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Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′ 16 ″  N , 6 ° 58 ′ 31 ″  E

Zoo bridge
Zoo bridge
Zoobrücke, aerial photo 2020
Subjugated Rhine
place Cologne - Deutz / Mülheim - Cologne- Neustadt-Nord / Riehl
construction Steel bridge
overall length 597 m
width 33 m
building-costs about 34 million DM
start of building 1962
completion 1966/1975
location
Zoobrücke (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Zoo bridge
The roadway Zoobrücke from the Cologne cable car seen from

The Zoobrücke in Cologne is a bridge over the Rhine . As part of the B 55a, it connects the Innere Kanalstrasse - a ring road through the inner green belt and the former Prussian fortress ring of Cologne - with the motorway network on the right bank of the Rhine. The bridge offers three lanes for car traffic, a cycle path and a footpath in each direction of travel.

Planning and construction

After the first considerations about the construction of a bridge originated in 1953, the council decided to build the new bridge in 1962 and launched a design competition. The winner was the architect Gerd Lohmer , who had already designed several bridges in Cologne, together with a consortium of companies led by Rheinstahl Union Brückenbau AG from Dortmund. Although Lohmer's design provided for a red paint job, the bridge was painted in Cologne's bridge green.

On July 9, 1962, construction work began on the new “North” bridge. On February 22nd, 1963, the bridge was named "Zoobrücke" through a readers' competition run by a Cologne daily newspaper. The Cologne Zoo is only about 200 meters from the bridge ramp on the left bank of the Rhine.

In 1965 the final section was used and on November 22, 1966 the zoo bridge with the first section of the motorway was officially inaugurated. It was not until April 27, 1975 that the north-south route into the city center was connected to the bridge on the left bank of the Rhine .

construction

The Zoobrücke is the most widely spanned box girder bridge in the world with only one main bearing. The bridge pillar stands asymmetrically near the bank on the right bank of the Rhine. From there the bridge spans 259 meters to the two slender pillars on the lower left bank of the Rhine.

The bridge is supported by two 4.5 meter wide box girders ("two-cell") on which the self-supporting roadway rests. Above the bridge piers, the profile of the hollow body has the greatest height at 10 meters (minimum 3 meters). 29 bulkheads divide 28 boxes. As in aircraft construction, the walls of the hollow bodies are stiffened against dents by narrow sheet metal webs. Due to this lightweight construction, the bridge vibrates a lot. The length of the steel structure is 597 meters with a width of 33 meters. With a span of 259 meters, it is the largest bridge of this type on the Rhine. If you add the two driveways, the total length is 2.6 kilometers. The Zoobrücke cost around 34 million DM. With a traffic volume of 125,000 vehicles per day, it is the busiest bridge in Cologne, followed by 110,000 vehicles on the Rodenkirchener Brücke .

Cable car over the bridge

A special feature is the crossing of the bridge by the Cologne cable car . When planning the Zoobrücke, the cable car pylon on the right bank of the Rhine stood in the way of the bridge. That is why the cable car , which had already been opened for the 1957 Federal Garden Show in Cologne, was initially dismantled. Public opposition led to a rescheduling. The large pylon on the right bank of the Rhine was moved to the south and the cable car with a new pylon was continued into the Rheinpark area. Since then, the cable car has been traveling diagonally across the bridge.

Art in the bridge

On the occasion of an installation by the New York artist Serge Spitzer, the inside of the zoo bridge could be visited in 2000. The artist had placed 100,000 Kölsch sticks in the steel bridge construction in a variety of ways. Visitors had to put on protective helmets for the approx. 600 meter long path on a narrow footbridge that began in the bridge pillar on the right bank of the Rhine.

Oddities

In the 1970s, two alleged oil tanks were found during work in the Rhine channel and temporarily stored in the pylons of the bridge. The tanks were drilled there to check the contents. Afterwards it turned out that the supposed oil tanks were sharp English explosive bombs from the Second World War .

Web links

literature

  • The Zoobrücke - Flyer ed. City of Cologne Office for Bridges and Light Rail Construction, Cologne, 2000
  • Zoo Bridge - Spitzer, Serge; Mennekes, Friedhelm; Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2000; ISBN 3-88375-434-X

Web links

Commons : Zoobrücke  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
The next bridge upstream:
Hohenzollern Bridge 		Bridges over the Rhine The next bridge downstream:
Mülheimer Brücke