The Bridge Story

Around a month ago, the cities of Wiesbaden and Mainz had this big sudden announcement of the Theodor Heuss Bridge (the middle bridge between the two highly urbanized cities) being closed for one month....for sudden bridge renovation. 

This goes back to an inspection in late summer (2019) of the bridge and finding that the 'springs' at the Wiesbaden end that give the bridge 'joint' a bumping effect....were now non-existent.  They could only summarize that they'd broken at some point, and basically fallen into the river (the Rhine) below).  In plain talk, it needed major repairs made. 

The plan was to shut the bridge mostly down....allowing buses, bicyclists, and walking folks to cross the bridge, and forbidding car traffic.  The problem here....44,000 people make a roundtrip each day across that bridge to reach work (either in Mainz or Wiesbaden). 

For those who aren't aware of it.....there are only three total traffic bridges in this entire region.  So crossing off this one single bridge created a massive 'mess', with chaos figured for the next four weeks. 

They've advertised this approaching problem in the newspapers, the internet, the radio networks, and via HR/SWR (our regional sub-networks).  Signs have been up for at least ten days near the bridge....alerting people of the bridge closure. 

So, curiously on Monday morning.....there were probably a thousand cars on both sides of the river, which approached and were utterly shocked at the closure.  These people had no idea of the announcement, and were questioning why no one told them of the impending renovation. 

This brings me to this topic....that a lot of Germans simply don't follow local news, read their local papers, or listen to public radio networks.  Sure, they might catch the 8 PM national news, and maybe watch a forum piece on some political topic....but if you asked a hundred Germans about some significant topic in their town (like Mainz or Wiesbaden)....I'd take a guess that one out of three knows literally nothing about what's coming up or going on. 

Part of this going back to fewer newspaper readers?  Yes. 

But I might go and argue that a lot of Germans are on 'automatic' and just fail to grasp certain things (like new signs that appear on the way to work) or radio chatter discussing bridge closures.  You see this a lot in the US, and you can glimpse events like this occasionally here in the Wiesbaden area. 

As for stress for travelers in the morning?  Most folks are now adding 15 to 30 minutes onto their morning commute, with this key bridge out.  And it complicates the normal travelers on the other two existing bridges....with significantly more traffic.