The Europabrücke is a motorway bridge that spans the Main between the Frankfurt districts of Griesheim and Schwanheim. It is at river kilometer 30.010 and has a vertical clearance of 7.75 m above HSW.[2] The BAB 5 is routed to four lanes in each direction via the beam bridge construction consisting of two superstructures.
On both banks of the Main, the Europabrücke is connected to the city with junctions; North Main is the Westhafen junction and South Main is the Niederrad junction. On the west side of the Europa Bridge, a walkway attached to the bridge for pedestrians and cyclists connects Griesheim with the Goldstein settlement.
The first plans for a motorway with a bridge over the Main near Griesheim date back to 1926 and were created as part of HaFraBa. After Hitler, who originally rejected the construction of the Autobahn, recognized the importance of the HaFraBa project, he pushed ahead with the construction of the Autobahn. As early as 1934/35, a motorway bridge was built on the site of today’s Europabrücke.
This was a steel girder bridge with a trough section for each directional lane. The two superstructures were each 9.6 m wide. The maximum span of the five-span, 270 m long structure was 72 m in the river area.[3] The bridge was blown up in the last days of the war, rebuilt in 1945/46 and inaugurated in April 1946.
In the years 1974 to 1978 the motorway bridge near Griesheim was replaced by the current structure. The first superstructure was opened to traffic in September 1976, and the entire bridge was inaugurated in June 1978. The two superstructures consist of two-cell prestressed concrete box girders, each 23 m wide. The spans are 87.67 m, 128.30 m and 91.25 m. The construction height is constant at 4.44 m in the central span and increases in the peripheral spans down to 3.80 m. The roadway slab projects 3.75 m on each side. The central opening was erected in a cantilever construction, the side openings with falsework.
