On Tuesday morning, workers cleared the last warning beacons from the street at Kreuz Meckenheim near Bonn. Traffic can now roll in all directions again.
Meckenheim – Five months after the devastating flood disaster in the Rhineland, the heavily damaged Autobahn 61 has been opened again.
On Tuesday morning, workers cleared the last warning beacons from the road at Kreuz Meckenheim near Bonn, then the police opened the route with a convoy. “The reconstruction of the infrastructure has been extremely successful in the last five months,” said North Rhine-Westphalia’s Transport Minister Ina Brandes (CDU) on Tuesday. “In my opinion, we owe that to the residents here.” The clearance of the route is also important for the economy.
reopening
During the flood in July, the A61 near the state border between North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate was destroyed. Water washed away the asphalt, lane strips, embankments and noise barriers collapsed. The A61 in the direction of Koblenz (Rhineland-Palatinate) had already been released in September, and five months after the flood it was reopened in the direction of Venlo (Netherlands).
The residents, in particular, were delighted that traffic could drive on the autobahn again and not have to switch to the surrounding routes. “We felt a bit choked in traffic,” said the mayor of Swisttal, Petra Kalkbrenner (CDU). “You gave us a nice Christmas present.”
According to the Autobahn GmbH, a little over 20 million euros have already gone into repairing the motorway network this year. In total, it is expected that the repair costs will be around 60 to 70 million euros after the flood. dpa
