Status: 16.12.2021 10:18 a.m.
Many bridges in Germany are old and ailing. The federal motorway company therefore wants to expand the renovation significantly in 2022. The number of overpasses to be renewed is to be doubled.
In the coming year, the federal motorway company intends to focus in particular on the renovation of bridges. “We have to double the number of bridges to be renewed annually from 200 to 400,” said Stephan Krenz, CEO of Autobahn GmbH, the dpa news agency.
According to the state-owned company, around half of the 28,000 motorway bridges in Germany were built between the 1960s and 1980s. These reached the end of their lifespan in the years to come. Autobahn GmbH therefore wants to promote the maintenance, renovation and renewal of the entire network. A “bridge task force” has been set up for the plans.
Autobahn GmbH has been responsible since the beginning of the year
The increased traffic on the motorways is also a reason for the increased renovation, according to the company, which has been responsible for the highways since January 1, 2021. It has almost doubled since the early 1980s. Above all, the proportion of heavy goods traffic as well as large-capacity and heavy goods transport has increased significantly.
As early as September, the Federal Ministry of Transport announced that more than two billion euros would be invested in the modernization of bridges on important and heavily used motorway routes in this country over the next five years. It was about the special program “Bridge Link”, with which the work on highly loaded sections of the route should be accelerated.
The federal government took over the operation, maintenance, expansion and financing of the motorways from the federal states. The goals of the major reform: build faster, less traffic jams and better information for drivers. With the realignment, construction companies should have the same contact person. In addition, tenders and rules are standardized and projects are planned from a single source. The motorway network covers a total of 13,000 kilometers.
“Significant future projects”
Krenz spoke of a successful first year for the Autobahn GmbH. In the first year of operation, 4.92 billion euros were put into the maintenance and expansion of the federal highways. This sum is almost at the same level of expenditure in the previous year in all federal states, explained Krenz. Around 5000 planning and construction projects have been worked on and around 275,000 invoices have been posted.
In addition, Autobahn GmbH has started “significant future projects” for more security, service and construction acceleration, said Krenz. He referred, for example, to the opening of a pilot facility for modern rest areas. In July, the company launched its own service app, which is intended to provide drivers with better information about the traffic situation through “exclusive data” and to supplement navigation systems such as Google Maps & Co. Independent route guidance is not possible, only route planning. For this very reason, however, many users describe them in reviews as superfluous.
Accused of wasting taxes
“More than a million euros for an app without any added value – that is a farce and therefore a case for the Court of Auditors,” emphasized Green transport politician Stefan Gelbhaar a few months ago. The taxpayers’ association last included the case in its black book of wasted tax money. Around 1.2 million euros were sunk into the unnecessary development – plus 11,000 euros for public relations. Because the data for the app are not exclusively available to society.
Increased costs, excessive salaries, delays in IT systems or the hidden announcement that long-term financing should be obtained directly from the user: the new company also received a lot of criticism again and again. Actually, the German Unity Fernstraßenplanungs- und -bau GmbH was supposed to be integrated into the Autobahn GmbH – but this was stopped in view of legal concerns.