With the red bridge over the Rheinstraße Donges SteelTec sets an imprressive new accent on urban development in Darmstadt

The new bridge over Darmstadt’s most important access road provides an important new pedestrian and cycle link between the Europaviertel with the main railway station and the new Rhein-Main telecommunications centre.

The aim was to preserve the tree population as far as possible. For this reason, the bridge swings over the Rheinstraße and playfully winds its way between the trees with its long ramps.

The bridge consists of a steel construction made in our factory in Darmstadt, it is 318 metres long and three metres wide. 370 tonnes of steel go into the structure, which rests on V-shaped supports.

While it is finished in steel grey on the outside, the stairs, access road and zebra crossing are designed in bright red. LED lighting is fully integrated into the handrails. In the evening and night hours, it illuminates the entire course of the bridge and the red interior colour begins to shine.

After the construction of the Dornheimer Weg Bridge in 1910 and its renovation in 2002, we are proud to have once again set an urban accent in Darmstadt with the new bridge over the Rheinstraße.

Two new Steigerwald motorway bridges in just one night

During the last operation, it was only one bridge, this time we increased the operation and installed two steel hollow box girders for the country road bridges over the A3 near Erlangen in only one night.

For this, the section between Heßdorf and Höchstadt an der Aisch was completely closed for 14 hours.

In order to keep the closure of the motorway as short as possible, two different pre-assembly sites with wide access to the motorway had been set up beforehand. Here, the 4 bridge parts prefabricated in our factory in Darmstadt were welded together to form the two 260 and 380 tonne and 70 meter long steel colossi.

In order to transport the two bridges in their full size to the actual construction site, a complicated and unusual technique was required. Two self-propelled heavy-duty transport modules (SPMT) were used for this purpose. They brought the bridge constructions at walking pace over the closed motorway to the places where they were set down free-floating, centimetre by centimetre, at their destination.

The 70 km long motorway section in the Steigerwald between Würzburg and Erlangen will be renewed by 2025. Another 19 steel composite bridges will be installed in the same way.