According to an expert, too little has been invested in the maintenance of bridges in Berlin in recent decades. Regarding the partial collapse of the Carola Bridge in Dresden, engineer Christian Müller, board member of the Berlin Chamber of Construction, told the “Abendschau” on RBB television: “You don’t expect a structure of this type to collapse on its own at night without any traffic load.”
“But we in Berlin also have these prestressed concrete bridges that we have to examine and that are also maintained very closely,” said Müller, who advises the Berlin transport authority on the issue of bridge stability. “But the problem is simple: we have not spent enough money on maintenance over the last 20 years, which means we have not provided sufficient capacity, personnel, construction costs, etc.”
“The ice will eventually become thin”
The ice will eventually become thin. “And then there can be collapses like this, which are not planned and are not nice, but we have a lot of catching up to do, urgently.”
In the city center of Dresden, a 100-meter-long section of a prestressed concrete bridge collapsed into the Elbe in the middle of the night on Wednesday. Another section is considered to be in danger of collapsing.
Müller sees the danger that the problem could increase in the future: “If the federal budget and the state budgets are as strained as they are now, i.e. if there is basically no money for investments in infrastructure and there is not enough money available and not enough is increased, then the problem will get worse,” he said.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:240911-930-230017/1
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