Users of tram line 17 and drivers will have to be patient for a while in the Ludwigsbrücke area. Because the construction work there is taking two years longer than planned. Tram traffic will remain interrupted at this point until October 2024. Because of the construction site facilities, Erhardtstrasse and Steinsdorfstrasse continue to be a bottleneck with traffic jams.
In fact, the work should have been completed by now. When the city council decided in 2019 to refurbish the Ludwigsbrücke bridge, which was long overdue, neither the corona crisis nor the associated delivery bottlenecks in the construction industry were foreseeable. However, according to the building department, it is precisely these that are to blame for the fact that the renovation is dragging on. The start of construction, which was scheduled for spring 2020, has already been delayed by almost a year because the construction of the two temporary bridges for cyclists and pedestrians and the preparation for construction could be completed late due to the pandemic.
According to the building department, it is unclear how long the effects of the pandemic and the supply bottlenecks for materials and building materials will continue to affect the ongoing construction work. The main work on the Ludwigsbrücke, which actually consists of two bridges, has been completed since last November. Now the public utilities have started to lay new tracks and supply lines there. According to the municipal utility, the long construction period is due to the fact that car traffic must be guaranteed and parallel work on tracks and lines is only possible to a limited extent.