Rethe Bascule Bridge

The construction of the Rethe bascule bridge in the port of Hamburg is a project of superlatives. It is one of the biggest of its type in the world. Two bridge wings for road traffic and two bridge wings for rail traffic are planned. On completion, the Rethe Bridge will fulfil its purpose to enable land traffic to cross the Rethe, which is a waterway in a port area.

But, as a Bascule Bridge, it must also serve Hamburg Harbour’s shipping traffic. And the volume of this traffic is significant: Hamburg Harbour is, after Rotterdam and Antwerp, the third largest sea port in Europe. To serve the large number of passing vessels, irrespective of those vessels’ size, Waagner-Biro’s bridge construction not only needs to open very often, but also extremely quickly and reliably. This will guarantee that restriction to traffic in both directions is kept to as little as possible.

Expressed statistically:

• Between the two pivot bearings, the bridge’s span is 105m.

• The width of the street bridge is 13.75m and the rail bridge’s width is 10.20m.

• The bridge is constructed to open and close about 3,000 times a year.

• An opening operation takes approximately 260 seconds and, depending on the synchronisations mechanism which compensates for the wind and other weather irregularities, takes about 465 second to close.

The scope of Waagner-Biro‘s contribution to this project includes its design, the manufacture and installation of the mechanical engineering, the hydraulic drive systems and the machine control systems. It was these that presented the project with a complex challenge because they demand the meeting of very high standards of quality, security and redundancy.