Heavy plate steel from Dillinger Hütte for the longest road bridge in Hesse, Germany

With the lifting into place of a 120-meter long bridge section weighing 2,000 tons, construction of the new Schierstein Bridge (Schiersteiner Brücke) has made visible progress. This spectacular feat was accomplished last Tuesday and attended by Rainer Bomba, State Secretary of the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, as well as by Hesse’s Transport Minister Tarek Al-Wazir. Interested citizens were able to watch the event from a visitor’s zone on the bank of the Rhine.

At 1,280 meters, the new Schierstein Bridge is the longest road bridge in Hesse. It spans the Rhine between Wiesbaden-Schierstein and Mainz-Mombach. As part of the extension of federal highway 643, it replaces the existing Rhine bridge at Schierstein, which is more than 50 years old and will no longer be capable of meeting transport needs in coming years.

The building concept, meanwhile, calls for constructing the new bridge in two halves: the first half of the bridge is being built downstream and runs parallel to the existing Rhine bridge at Schierstein. Afterward, traffic will be guided onto this section of the bridge so that the existing bridge can be dismantled and newly built upstream. Upon completion of the construction project, there will be three traffic lanes with hard shoulders in each direction on both of the separate new structures.

Due to the exposed position of the Schierstein Bridge over the Rhine and the importance of the area it spans for nature and the surrounding environment, extremely high requirements were placed on the design of the new construction. Because the bridge crosses over the Rhine island Rettbergsaue, which is heavily populated with birds, the plans had to incorporate and comply with strict requirements from studies by bird experts.

Work on the first half of the new bridge is expected to be completed by the end of 2016. Dillinger Hütte supplied 6,880 tons of heavy plate for this superstructure.