Federal transport minister Patrick Schnieder (CDU) voiced support for a North Rhine‑Westphalia initiative before it even reached the relevant committees. He said the Bundesrat should push the federal government to take stronger measures to protect Germany’s aging bridges, for instance by increasing fines when freight companies send overweight trucks across them.
Schnieder told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” that the goal is to keep traffic flowing until a bridge is replaced. “We will do everything we can to maintain traffic while the bridge is being replaced” he said. He emphasized that safeguarding existing bridges is critical and that he is “willing to explore together with the states ways to protect bridges from too‑heavy trucks”. The minister added that they would pay close attention to fine levels and, equally importantly, to effective controls such as in‑route weigh‑station measurements with the latest technology. “We’re working closely with our experts on that” he noted.
North Rhine‑Westphalia alone maintains 6,300 bridges, many of which need repair. Because construction capacity is limited, weight restrictions are increasingly common. Yet measurements show many freight operators ignore them. On the Uerdinger Bridge between Duisburg and Krefeld, trucks exceeding the 30‑ton limit are recorded 170 times a single working day. “Every violation of the weight restrictions on our bridges is one too many” said NRW transport minister Oliver Krischer. “These breaches unnecessarily damage bridges, and we cannot accept that”.
The high number of violations can also be attributed to the fact that freight companies face little financial penalty when they haul overweight trucks over deteriorated bridges. Consequently, “it can economically make sense for companies to ignore the restrictions and the intended fines, for example to use shorter routes or to avoid extra trips” the draft resolution states.
The appropriate size of fines and whether stricter measures are required are regularly reassessed by the federal government and the states, the transport ministry’s spokeswoman said. As a result, several tightening measures have already been implemented in the past.
