Page 30 - Hafen Hamburg | Broschüre | Port of Hamburg Magazine 4.2020

K20
Futuristic noise protection walls dominate the image of the A7 in Hamburg before it enters one of the roofed-over sections.
A26
■ INFRASTRUCTURE PORT
30 | Port of Hamburg Magazine | December 2020
every day. In 2017, 18 percent of these were trucks. Current forecasts show that the numbers will continue to grow. In 2030, this section at the port junction in Waltershof will be used by around 138,700 vehicles, 25 percent of them trucks.
These figures lie considerably above the original plans for the western by- pass and the Elbe Tunnel from 1975 and 1992, in which at the start 56,000 vehicles and later 100,000 vehicles had been forecast. The accident sta- tistics, too, are also above average. This means that the expansion of the A7 by DEGES – German Unity High- way Planning and Construction Agen- cy – to six or eight lanes is absolutely indispensable.
On the 11.6-kilometre A7 stretch, there
are numerous distinctive features such
as the Langenfelder bridge that is al-
most 400 metres long. This was rebuilt and widened while traffic continued to flow. It was completed in October 2018. Further highlights of city planning and
architectural engineering are the three tunnels north of the (new) Elbe Tunnel, including the 550-metre Sch- nelsen tunnel that has been in service since December 2019. Currently under construction, Stellingen Tunnel is almost 890 metres long. To link the Othmarschen and Bahrenfeld districts, Altona Tunnel is still at the planning stage. The three Hamburg noise-reduction tunnels pave the way for the future all over Europe. Since the roofed-over sections provide green spaces to be used as parks, they are also examples of ‘Critical Reconstruction’ of the city.
EXTENSION OF K20 ELEVATED HIGHWAY AND REPLACEMENT OF K30 BRIDGE – IN PLANNING
South of the Elbe tunnel, the Elbmarsch
elevated highway forms part of the A7. The six-lane structure leads across the Elbe marshes with their in- dustrial and port sites and is actually 3840 metres long, Germany’s longest bridge. Almost 600 metres of the K30 ramp outside the southern entrance of the Elbe tun- nel need to be added.
This segment of the A7 is in a uniformly poor condi- tion. The eight-lane K30 is successively being dis- mantled and rebuilt. A two-lane auxiliary road is being built so that six lanes will be available throughout the four-year construction period. The first partial demoli- tion of the ramp began this year, and construction of the whole area will be completed in 2024.
Due to the heavy amount of traffic and the high proportion of heavy truck traffic due to the proximity of the port, the currently six-lane Elbmarsch elevated highway can no longer guarantee smooth traffic flow. So even outside peak traffic periods, jams build up daily. The K20 is being fundamentally rebuilt and extended into eight lanes. What’s so special here? When it was built almost 50 years ago, the elevated road was already designed to accommo- date one additional lane in each direction. The planners left space for two additional lanes. An additional new bridge structure is being built between the two existing ones to cater for the expansion, with two additional lanes being constructed and connected to the existing lanes. Con- struction officially commenced at the end of November.
IN PLANNING: A26 EAST – FORMERLY THE PORT LINK ROAD, NOW THE PORT CROSSING Eastward extension of the almost ten
kilometres of the A26 from Stade constitutes an im- portant traffic axis that in the first place links the two foremost German autobahns A1 and A7.
DEGES sees the Port South – Hafen Süd – exit as looking like this in future
© DEGES
© DEGES