German highway stretch reopening to be delayed

Repairs to the A20 highway route in northern Germany are now likely to take longer than initially expected. The route will now take until 2023 to repair, with the work costing some €100 million to carry out and requiring a temporary bridge to carry traffic past the failed section. The temporary bridge accounts for more than half of the cost of the work. The geological problems with the A20 Autobahn route first became visible in September 2018 when a section near Tribsees started to suffer from subsidence.
February 19, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
Repairs to the A20 highway route in northern Germany are now likely to take longer than initially expected. The route will now take until 2023 to repair, with the work costing some €100 million to carry out and requiring a temporary bridge to carry traffic past the failed section. The temporary bridge accounts for more than half of the cost of the work.


The geological problems with the A20 Autobahn route first became visible in September 2018 when a section near Tribsees started to suffer from subsidence. This initial subsidence was then followed by a complete collapse of a 40m section of the road and became progressively worse, resulting in a 95m stretch suffering major failure. The presence of peat deposits under the roadway has been blamed for the technical problems. Insufficient stabilisation of the afflicted stretch was carried out prior to building of the road.

Building a road over very soft ground requires special construction techniques. However these methods are well understood, having been developed during the early days of the railway building boom in the UK during the 19th century. The Manchester to Liverpool railway line opened to traffic in 1830 and features a 7.6km stretch built across the Chat Moss bog, with this section of track remaining in use today. Why these techniques were not properly employed for this road project is unclear.

Road Structures

Related Content

  • Tanzania’s work on East Africa’s multi-national road project
    November 28, 2022
    Tanzania is kick-starting construction work on the missing link in East Africa's multinational road
    Read More
  • The Lessons of the Genoa bridge collapse
    April 23, 2019
    The partial collapse of the Polcevera viaduct, better known as the Morandi Bridge, has prompted debate regarding the technical and administrative aspects of maintaining road infrastructures. We discussed it with the engineer Gabriele Camomilla, former Director of Research and Maintenance of the Società Autostrade, who coordinated the only major structural intervention performed on the bridge, carried out in the early 1990s
    Read More
  • Italy's strategic tunnel link
    August 21, 2012
    The world's largest tunnelling machine is completing Italy's important road connection between Bologna and Florence - Adrian Greeman reports For just under a decade a huge programme of highway construction has been underway in the mountainous region between Bologna and Florence, realigning a section of the A1 highway nearly 70km long. The new section, through major tunnels and across high viaducts, will greatly increase capacity on Italy's most important highway.
    Read More
  • Tunnels and bridges, improving Argentina's major road link
    April 24, 2012
    A road improvement plus tunnel and bridge building contract in an area once inhabited by dinosaurs in northern Argentina, is a small but key part of an ambitious project to complete a road that will eventually link the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Latin America - Adriana Potts reports. Remote, rough and spectacular are words that come to mind when describing the mountains of Ischigualasto in Argentina's northern province of San Juan This is the only place in the world where an undisturbed sequence of rock
    Read More

Highlighted Content