Rehabilitating the roadways of Frankfurter Kreuz motorway junction is the road construction equivalent of open-heart surgery. This is, after all, one of the most critical road traffic hubs in Germany, located in the direct vicinity of Frankfurt Airport. On average, some 135,000 vehicles use the junction every day. Such a high volume of traffic necessitates a meticulously planned rehabilitation project and the fastest possible project completion. Just the thing for the machines of the Wirtgen Group, which took centre stage on the job site. They completed the task reliably and to a high standard of quality in less than 57 hours.
The demolition of a bridge on the A5 at Darmstädter Kreuz motorway junction just a few kilometres south of the Frankfurter Kreuz junction had become unavoidable. The busy A5 motorway had to be blocked to this end, providing the ideal opportunity to simultaneously carry out the urgently needed rehabilitation of the Frankfurt motorway junction. Indeed, the majority of traffic had already been re-routed, so the risk of congestion was low.
The perfect time for carrying out the work was between 3 and 6 October 2013. This year, German Unity Day – celebrated on 3 October – fell on a Thursday, and a long weekend with little traffic was expected. Consequently, Hessen Mobil planned the A5 rehabilitation work for this period. This meant that everything had to be finished within 57 hours from the time of blocking traffic to re-opening the completely rehabilitated sections, i.e. in 2 days and 3 nights.
