Germany's autobahn bridges falling apart
Germany's autobahn bridges falling apart
As many as 5,000 bridges along Germany's autobahns are so decrepit that they need to be renovated or rebuilt as quickly as possible. But the state, restrained by a national debt brake, is struggling to find the money.
Honestly this is the problem with all road infrastructure. It'll be interesting to see how countries like China manage it. China currently has the largest paved-road system in the world, and maintaining that will not come cheap.
Meanwhile, bosses: Imma need you all to come back in to the office....because reasons.
And they have not built their system with long term staging/replacement in mind. A lot of their shorter bridges don't look like they are designed for staged maintenance. Also, the political will to build is different than the political will to maintain.
This makes one of the "solutions" from the article: "A law was introduced at the end of 2023 that will eliminate the need for permits and environmental impact assessments for bridges that are being widened to add lanes as part of renovations." look particularly shortsighted. Infrastructure is a maintenance debt that we are reckoning with, so we will make it easier to build specifically bigger infrastructure so that in 25 years we will have an even bigger problem to solve? Not to mention the concept of induced demand meaning that those lanes are going to increase the amount of vehicles using the bridge, which would be exactly the kind of thing that should get an environmental assessment, versus repurposing some lanes for sustainable transit or building a separate bridge for those modes
It will come cheap though and it will probably come twice as fast as anywhere else.
The issue in Germany isn't so much that infrastructure needs to be maintained but that a lot of the bridges were built more or less at the same time (after ww2) so they're now failing more or less at the same time (at the end of their lifetime, no surprise there). Usually, a country doesn't build so much at the same time, so maintenance doesn't come all at once.
That they aren't being properly maintained/funded? It looks like a bunch of the bridges that are having issues are mostly due to age.
China's road infrastructure is all much newer than most other developed nations. And since it was built later I imagine the materials and civil engineering undergirding them is better.
However, the bill always comes due eventually for reinforced concrete. It's currently coming due in most of the west now from all the freeway building that happened in the 50s.
China still has a long time til they're in the same place, and it will be interesting to see if they learned the lessons of not deferring maintenance.
Germany's
autobahn bridgesfalling apartThanks to not making any debts. It's all the infrastructure, I don't think a single one isn't about to break down.
I've gone nearly insane trying to argue about this with family. How hard is it to see that investment in infrastructure pays dividends in the long run??
I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying Germany is falling apart because it doesn't have debt?
Basically. It's a complicated economy issue. But lets say there's not just monetary debt, but also structural debt. Our infrastructure is old, a lot has to be repaired by making debts. But they refuse to, thing is, the bridges will collapse at some point, literally, if you don't build new ones. This will all come back to hunt our economy as no train will deliver, no truck will be able to use the highway as a lot of bridges are broken. Same with schools, you get less educated people, which then on average produce less wealth. In short term you save money, in the long term the world will move on without you. Every economist knows, a little debt is perfect as it works in sync with the capitalism we all live in. However the payment for the dept shouldn't outgrow the economy, that's the only rule. Making no new debts sounds good on paper, but no young person will say "thank you" when they grew up with bad education, a broken economy and an inhabitable planet. Now is the best time to make debts to fix big issues.
More like it doesn't want to get the money to maintain those infrastructure by going into further debt.
I'm not following German politics very closely but the article mentions that this restriction is in their constitution.
There was something in that genre in my province decades ago when a government dedicated itself to 'zero deficit' by cutting on infrastructure maintenance for many years. A bridge eventually fell. Classic story. It seems like a common thing.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Twenty-four bright red trucks had been parked close together in the middle of the wide autobahn bridge at a height of 136 meters (446 feet).
Setting a speed limit and closing it to heavy vehicles could extend a bridge's life, but even these kinds of restrictions cannot rule out a sudden collapse.
In late 2021, the Rahmede bridge in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia was found to be so badly damaged that it had to be closed due to the risk of collapse.
Although traffic is being diverted over a wide area, thousands of vehicles still pass through the small town of Lüdenscheid and the neighboring villages every day.
A law was introduced at the end of 2023 that will eliminate the need for permits and environmental impact assessments for bridges that are being widened to add lanes as part of renovations.
Wissing thinks he has a way out of the predicament: A new infrastructure fund that the Free Democratic Party (FDP) wants to set up with the help of private capital.
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