Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Germany’s ailing bridges
2500 times the mark five
The bridges over which traffic on the highways rolls every day are not in good condition. Closures and thus costly bypasses are increasing. Now, for the first time, exact figures on the need for renovation are available.
The numbers are depressing. Of a total of more than 43,747 bridges on the federal trunk roads, more than 5,915 are in critical condition. This emerges from the response of the federal government to a small request from the FDP parliamentary group, which RTL / ntv is exclusively available to.
The almost 6000 ailing bridges include 2528, which the Federal Ministry of Transport has given the worst grade “Level V”. On the other hand, there are only 8641 bridge structures that are considered to be flawless in terms of their load-bearing capacity (“Level I”). “Level II” includes 16,736 and “Level III” 12,355 bridge objects.
The FDP traffic expert Oliver Luksic therefore calls for immediate investments, because the problem is getting bigger and bigger. “Most of the bridges date – especially in West Germany – from the seventies. Heavy goods traffic has increased and we are already experiencing a number of closures here,” said Luksic in an interview with RTL / ntv.
The federal government expects renovation costs of 9.3 billion euros by 2030. However, experts expect that this amount will not be enough. The rising construction costs alone act as a price driver.
FDP man Luksic is not so concerned about the piling up financial needs. The money is there. “The real problem is the lack of drainage. We have too few engineers who can implement the whole thing. Above all, we also have too long planning and approval times,” says Luksic. We urgently need to start. His conclusion: “There is money, we just have to plan and build faster in Germany.”