Dusseldorf
With today’s knowledge, the viaduct near Lüdenscheid should have been renovated or quickly rebuilt. But Wüst does not see his own mistakes.
NRW Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) has admitted mistakes in the run-up to the closure of the A45 Rahmedetal bridge.
From today’s perspective, the decision made in 2014 not to strengthen or renovate the dilapidated viaduct was wrong. “This mistake was not healed during my tenure as Minister of Transport,” said Wüst at a special session of the Transport Committee on Monday. But that also applies to his predecessors and successors in the Ministry of Transport and the federal government.
The South Westphalia region has been stuck in traffic chaos since the end of 2021
The abandonment of the bridge renovation and later the postponement of a new building for many years. The bridge had to be closed at the end of 2021, and the region has been in traffic chaos ever since.
Wüst does not recognize personal responsibility for the bridge disaster. Time and again, experts have given the Rahmedetal viaduct a grade of “3.0” for its condition. Although this means “insufficient condition”, it does not justify a full closure. Only in December 2021 did a new type of laser measurement make the true condition of the bridge visible.
The Autobahns were not built for today’s traffic
The former director of the Landesbetrieb Straßen.NRW, Elfriede Sauerwein-Braksiek, supported Wüst’s assessment that the disaster was not foreseeable from an expert’s point of view. However, she described how much traffic takes up the entire A45.
“The motorway network dates back to the 1960s and was designed according to the standards of the time. The Rahmedetal Bridge was designed for a traffic load of 25,000 vehicles per day. But that rose to 64,000 by 2015,” says Sauerwein-Braksiek, who today heads the federal Autobahn GmbH in Westphalia.
“Shortage management” in road construction in North Rhine-Westphalia
The engineer drew the picture of a dramatic “shortage management” at Strassen.NRW. At that time, this authority was responsible for 13,000 buildings and was understaffed. You can’t question every technical bridging examination. Wüst said that in 2017 as Minister of Transport he encountered a “huge renovation backlog” and worked against it with additional staff and money.
SPD and FDP stated that the transport committee had not provided any information about the political responsibility for the bridge disaster. Like the AfD, these factions continue to threaten a parliamentary committee of inquiry.
Opposition continues to increase the pressure
“We know from other construction projects that Wüst exerted political influence in order to speed them up. It was not possible to explain why this should not have been the case with the Rahmedetalbrücke,” said FDP traffic expert Christof Rasche.
“Our impression after the meeting is that a lot has happened behind the scenes here that has not yet been publicly known,” said Gordan Dudas, spokesman for transport policy for the SPD. Hendrik Wüst repeatedly avoided the questions.
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