German Autobahns

[SignBridge]

Re: the large up-arrows, I think the German design is better. The MUTCD spec has too much wasted space at the bottom of the sign. This will result in some unusually large sign panels. But it's only the first attempt in America at this type of design. The Germans have been using this set-up for many years and have refined it.

[agentsteel53]

Reichsautobahnen also extended into what is modern-day Poland, such as the A4 to Wrocław which was horrible in 2003 (longest stairs of Europe due to the gaps between the concrete) but renovated in 2006. As of today, no more bad-quality freeways exist in Poland.

this is not correct, as of November, 2011.  the first few miles of A4 in Poland are, I believe, the original 1943 concrete mainline and cobblestone RI-RO exits.  speed limit is 50 km/h and that is pushing it.

[Chris]

I think you mean the A18 in Poland? The border crossing of A4 with Germany near Görlitz/Zgorzelec didn't open until 1994. The A18/DK18 runs from the Olszyna border crossing (towards Berlin) to A4 near the village of Krzyżowa. The north/westbound direction is in good condition, the east/southbound is not (and it doesn't have motorway/freeway status).

[agentsteel53]

you are right, it is A18.  I had misremembered.

I did not pay much attention to the westbound carriageway.  I wonder if that is a unique situation in the world - a road where one carriageway is autobahn status, and the opposite carriageway is not.

looking at Google Street View, it seems that just before the German border, westbound trucks are all stopped, occupying all three lanes.  I would assume the trucks are at rest due to the German ban on Sunday commercial traffic ... but what about car traffic, are they expected to pass the trucks by driving on the median or shoulder?

the A15 autobahn in Germany, between A13 and the Poland border, is pretty narrow and old-looking as well.  The road surface is well maintained, but the layout might be as old as the 40s.

[Chris]

The imagery of that section dates back to 2000, when Poland was not in the EU yet, and there were strict border controls with Germany, waiting times for trucks were many hours back in those days (even a day or more was not uncommon). Usually the cars bypass the trucks. Such waiting lines of miles and miles can still be seen at the Belarussian and Russian borders (the waiting line at the Finnish-Russian border once reached 50 kilometers).

About A13, it was constructed in 1938-1940 with one carriageway (the eastbound one), but all bridges were prepared for 2x2, but the war prevented any further construction apparently. The westbound carriageway didn't open until the 1990's.

[agentsteel53]

really?  even the higher-resolution imagery stamped "(c) 2011" is 2000 vintage? 

I am sure glad I took A13 and A18 eastbound!

[Chris]

The border crossing is just at the edge of two different satellite images. As Poland and Germany are currently both in Schengen, there are no border controls either way. I suppose the Sunday truck driving bans are not much of a problem due to the relatively low volumes at this border crossing, and the giant truck parking area to the north.

The border station has been demolished for through traffic, as is evidenced by this photo:

[Truvelo]

Some observations about that last picture. The road surface deteriorates on the Polish side and those streetlights have a very communist look about them, maybe it's the 45 degree angle of the brackets.

[agentsteel53]

when was that photo taken?

I finally uploaded some photos from Nov 2, 2011 here:

https://www.aaroads.com/blog/2012/06/07/the-last-reichsautobahn/

here is the photo I got, with at least five "capitalist style" light gantries added on the German side.

[Truvelo]

The lanterns look like Trafficvisions, a fairly common design used in Britain. Looking at the perspective of both pictures I'd imagine the five columns in Agentsteel's picture are the same as in Chris', it's just that Chris' picture was taken much further ahead. Trafficvisions aren't exactly a new design as many British examples were installed in the late 90's.

[agentsteel53]

you're right; Chris's photo appears to show the bottom of the stem of the last post in Germany.  his photo is taken almost exactly at the border, while mine is taken from further away.  also, mine is zoomed in more, so the perspective is different and the poles appear to be closer together in mine.

so from that, it makes it - upon my first glance - look like the posts were not there in Germany when Chris took the photo, but a new investigation shows that the one that would be visible is, indeed, visible.  so the German posts may very well be just as old as the Polish ones, even if they have a more modern-looking design.

[RoadWarrior56]

Here is a link to a website in German that has numerous pictures of an old Autobahn that is now in Poland, I think the one discussed in this thread.  There used to be a really good site called "Abandoned Autobahns in Poland", that was active about 10 years ago, but it appears to have been taken off the web.

http://www.berlinka.pcp.pl/berlinka_de.htm

[agentsteel53]

the Berlinka is a different road than A15/18.  Berlinka goes east with a bit of a north tilt out of Berlin towards Gdansk, Poland (aka Danzig), and Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia (aka Konigsberg). 

I can vaguely parse the German, but the Polish pages on the site are pretty incomprehensible to me, so I think I'll run them through an auto-translate.

[agentsteel53]

now that is a Reichsautobahn!  1991 photo, though.  I believe a fair bit of the Berlinka has been modernized in recent years, so very little of that kind of abandoned infrastructure is still around.

I titled my blog post about highway 18 as "the last Reichsautobahn" because I believe that 80km or so stretch replete with lots of old cobblestone exits is the only extensive surviving stretch of 1930s-1940s infrastructure.

[Chris]

Some "impossible" exits and entrances in Germany:

A8 Salzburg - Rosenheim:

pic 745 by Chriszwolle, on Flickr

A4 near Jena:

img 263 by Chriszwolle, on Flickr

A8 near Neunkirchen

A8-33 by Chriszwolle, on Flickr

[agentsteel53]

that last photo reminds me to ask - what do the U-numbers mean?  two signs: U8, and U12/U13: what does that mean?  I never quite could glark that from context when I was in Germany.

[J N Winkler]

that last photo reminds me to ask - what do the U-numbers mean?  two signs: U8, and U12/U13: what does that mean?  I never quite could glark that from context when I was in Germany.

"U" stands for Umleitung--German for "detour"--and these signs are trailblazers for permanent marked detour routes which are available for use when certain lengths of Autobahn have to be closed in an emergency.  A similar approach to signing permanent detours is used in Austria.  There are separate orange-on-white signs (the orange design being a pentagon regular about its long axis which is heavier on one end) which are arrow signs for workzone detours and are called Umlenkungspfeil in German.

[mgk920]

that last photo reminds me to ask - what do the U-numbers mean?  two signs: U8, and U12/U13: what does that mean?  I never quite could glark that from context when I was in Germany.

"U" stands for Umleitung--German for "detour"--and these signs are trailblazers for permanent marked detour routes which are available for use when certain lengths of Autobahn have to be closed in an emergency.  A similar approach to signing permanent detours is used in Austria.  There are separate orange-on-white signs (the orange design being a pentagon regular about its long axis which is heavier on one end) which are arrow signs for workzone detours and are called Umlenkungspfeil in German.

Here, I'm seeing increasing numbers of 'ALTERNATE' major highway route markers on nearby side roads, the same concept.

Can I safely assume that those substandard autobahn entrances and exits are on roads that have not been recently rebuilt?

Mike

[Truvelo]

Some "impossible" exits and entrances in Germany:

At least you don't have to come to a complete stop like those on the Merritt Parkway where there's a stop sign at the end of each on-ramp.

[NE2]

that last photo reminds me to ask - what do the U-numbers mean?  two signs: U8, and U12/U13: what does that mean?  I never quite could glark that from context when I was in Germany.

"U" stands for Umleitung--German for "detour"--and these signs are trailblazers for permanent marked detour routes which are available for use when certain lengths of Autobahn have to be closed in an emergency.  A similar approach to signing permanent detours is used in Austria.  There are separate orange-on-white signs (the orange design being a pentagon regular about its long axis which is heavier on one end) which are arrow signs for workzone detours and are called Umlenkungspfeil in German.

Here, I'm seeing increasing numbers of 'ALTERNATE' major highway route markers on nearby side roads, the same concept.

It's much closer to Pennsylvania's colored detours.

[J N Winkler]

Can I safely assume that those substandard autobahn entrances and exits are on roads that have not been recently rebuilt?

Generally, yes.  The usual giveaway is the lack of a full hard shoulder (1930's standards called only for a narrow paved strip on either side of the traveled way, whose German name was frequently translated to "bankette" in British publications).  The Autobahnen shown in Chris' pictures have been overlaid with asphalt, so the original Portland cement concrete pavement is no longer visible, but otherwise they have their original 1930's cross-sections, as is demonstrated by the lack of lateral clearance between shoulder stripes and roadside safety hardware.

[agentsteel53]

(1930's standards called only for a narrow paved strip on either side of the traveled way, whose German name was frequently translated to "bankette" in British publications)

do you happen to know what this German word is?  I'm just asking out of idle etymological curiosity.

[J N Winkler]

The term I am familiar with is Leitstreifen, with a full hard shoulder being called Standspur (at least in colloquial usage).  German Wikipedia has a page on the elements of a typical highway cross-section:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stra%C3%9Fenquerschnitt

It insists that Seitenstreifen is the correct term for a full shoulder and uses the adverb fälschlich ("wrongly") to describe the popular use of Standspur ("standing lane"), Notspur ("emergency lane"), and Pannenstreifen ("breakdown lane") to refer to this highway feature.  (I think this level of pedantry is comparable to English speakers calling each other pond scum for using the word expressway to refer to freeways.)

For roads which do not have a full hard shoulder, modern German terminology makes a distinction between the hard strip immediately adjacent to the traveled way which is paved (Randstreifen) and a vegetated verge which is relatively level up to a ditch lip (Bankett).  1930's publications used the word Grünbankett to refer to the latter.  British publications (notably the Road Research Laboratory's reports from postwar reconnaissance of the German Autobahnen) used the cognate English word "bankette" just to refer to the paved hard strip--"verge" was used instead to refer to the Grünbankett.

[agentsteel53]

thanks!  my German is not so great that I can read most of that, but it is sometimes interesting to attempt to break down the German words into roots and translate those literally to English.  for example, I know what "straßen" are, but "querschnitt" looks to me like "quer and "schnitt", neither of which I can translate.

(also: German alphabet has "q" in it?)

[J N Winkler]

I probably know even less German than you do, but the nice thing about road-related terminology is that when it is accompanied by diagrams, it more or less explains itself.  Google Translate provides multiple glosses (dict.leo.org style) for both quer (adverb with the general meaning of "crosswise," possibly a loanword from some other European language given the qu part) and Schnitt (noun meaning "section," with considerable semantic overlap with English "section"--cutaway of a three-dimensional object, excerpt from a written work, etc.).