Bundesautobahn 7
is the longest German Autobahn and the longest national motorway in Europe at 963 km. It bisects the country almost evenly between east and west. In the north, it starts at the border with Denmark as an extension of the Danish part of E45. In the south, the autobahn ends at the Austrian border. This final gap was closed in September 2009.
Overview
The Bundesautobahn 7 starts at Flensburg and travels through the two states at Schleswig and Rendsburg, through the world's busiest artificial waterway of Kiel Canal crossing the Rader high bridge. At Rendsburg you can change to the A 210, a feeder to the Schleswig-Holstein capital, Kiel. A few kilometers further south there is another feeder route to Kiel, the A 215, into the A7 at the interchange Bordesholm; however, this can only be reached from the south, likewise from the A 215 you can only reach the A7 in the south. South of Bordesholm, the highway has been continuously expanded to six lanes since 2014 due to the high traffic volume to Hamburg. Since 2016 and 2017, several sections have six lanes. Here, the motorway leads past the cities of Neumünster, Bad Bramstedt and Norderstedt, before the hamlet of Schnelsen reaches Hamburg's urban area, and also Hamburg Airport. From the intersection Hamburg-Nordwest, where the A23 branches off towards Heide, the A7 is six lanes, but is currently being expanded to eight lanes.The section through the city of Hamburg is characterized by an immense volume of traffic, congestion is the order of the day here. There are several reasons for this: the motorway runs through inner-city areas, there is a lot of holiday traffic on the route during school holidays, there are practically no opportunities for bypassing, the speed is permanently limited to 80 km / h as an urban area and the section is extended, South of the equipped with four tubes to two lanes Elbe tunnel leads the A7 on the highway Elbmarsch, the longest road bridge in Germany, right through the harbor area and the Harburg mountains to Lower Saxony. Via the corner junction A 261 you get to the A 1 to Bremen, at the following Maschener Kreuz on the A 39 to Lüneburg.
Going through Hanover from Hamburg, the highway has six lanes, and it was downgraded to the four-lane section between Soltau and Walsrode the hard shoulder can be temporarily released as a third lane. It leads across the Lüneburg Heath, partly with separate directional lanes. At the triangle Walsrode you reach the A 27 to Bremen and a few kilometers to the south, before reaching the capital of Lower Saxony, at the junction Hannover-Nord on the A 352, which connects to Hannover Airport and ends at the A 2, which leads to Dortmund. The following motorway junctions of the A7 provide a connection to the A37 Hanover city center and to Celle or A 2 Ruhrgebiet-Berlin dar. By the Altwarmbüchener Moor the highway leads east to Hanover; at the triangle Hannover-Süd, where the southern branch of the A 37 to the fair Hanover is connected only with the further south part of the A7.
South of Hildesheim, the A7 enters a low mountain range and the terrain becomes hilly. The Salzgitter triangle also connects only the southern part of the A7 with the A 39 to Braunschweig and Salzgitter. Between the triangle Salzgitter and Göttingen the highway is expands to six lanes. Passing the university town, the A 38 branches off at Dreieck Drammetal to Leipzig, then the A7 leads over steep gradients and slopes down into the Werratal near the town of Hann. Münden and continues onto Hesse.
At Kassel, it is the largest district, from there you can get on the A44 in the direction of the west to the Ruhr area and in some years, when the extension Kassel-Herleshausen will be completed, also in the direction of Eisenach. Between the interchange Kassel-Ost and the interchange Kassel-Süd, the A7 is being developed eight-lane for a future convergence with the then branching off to the east A44. In Kassel, the unfinished A 49 branches off, which will lead from completed completion to the Ohmtal triangle, which is to be built near Homberg between the junctions Alsfeld-West and Homberg on the A5. Between Kassel and Kirchheim the Knüllgebirge is crossed. The Kirchheim triangle and the Hattenbacher triangle, which are close to each other and quite close to the geographic center of Germany, together form one of the most important motorway junctions of the state. The A 4 leads to the New Länder and Eastern Europe, the A 5 to the Rhine-Main area and on to the border of Switzerland. South of the Hattenbacher triangle is the A7 sections four-lane expanded, leads past Fulda, where the A 66 branches off to Hanau and reaches Bavarian territory.
Crossing the Rhön Mountains, pass Schweinfurt and Würzburg to the Biebelried intersection, where the A 3 Ruhrgebiet-Frankfurt am Main-Nürnberg-Passau is crossed. This was the southern end of the A7 for a long time. The completion of the south in the 1980s leads past Rothenburg ob der Tauber on the western edge of the Frankenhöhe to the freeway junction Feuchtwangen / Crailsheim and partly Baden-Württemberg area over the Ostalb, for the crossing even two tunnels had to be built, via Aalen to Ulm. At the motorway junction Ulm / Elchingen, the A8 is crossed. South of Ulm it goes through the Illertal parallel to the river back to Bavaria, via Memmingen and Kempten, over the 2009 completed section through the Reinertshoftunnel to the edge of the foot of the Alps. There, the lane becomes one lane and flows into the border tunnel Füssen to Austria.
History
The highway replaced as a trunk connection the imperial or federal roads 76, 77, 205 and 4, 3 and 27, which in turn went back to medieval precursors. On the route between Flensburg and Hamburg, for example, it follows the historic Ochsenweg and can be described as its successor in terms of its importance as a trade route from Scandinavia to the south. Plans for a highway from Hamburg to the south were made in the framework of the HaFraBa from 1926. This project is considered to be the predecessor of the A7 between Hamburg and the Hattenbacher Dreieck.The first section opened from Göttingen to Bad Hersfeld in 1937. Construction of the section between Bad Hersfeld and Würzburg began in 1937 with various bridge structures built however the road wasn't completed before war broke out in 1939 and construction was stopped before being fully abandoned in 1940. After World War 2 the route of A7 was altered leaving some of the abandoned bridge structures of Strecke 46 to be preserved as historic monuments.
From the 1950s, the highway was built between the A 1 south of Hamburg and the existing part of the A7 near Göttingen and opened in sections. At the A1 the "Horster triangle" was created as the new beginning of the A7. From the south coming vehicles had there at the threading to the A1 in the direction of west drive through a steep curve for many years.
The section Echte-Seesen was opened on 14 November 1959. The section Seesen Hildesheim was opened on 15 December 1960 by Secretary of Transportation Seebohm.
From 1956, the seven sections between Hamburg and Hanover were handed over to traffic. In 1960, the 21 km section between junction Berkhof and the cross Hannover / Kirchhorst was opened last.
The four remaining sections in between were opened in 1958. The gap closure was achieved with the 35 km section between motorway junction Hannover / Kirchhorst and junction Hildesheim in 1962.
In the 1960s, the A7 was then built on a slightly different route. The first to be opened in 1965 was the 10.9 km section north of the Biebelried interchange to the junction Würzburg / Estenfeld. 1966 followed the adjacent section to the present cross Schweinfurt / Werneck and the 14.8 km long section between Fulda North and Fulda South. The northernmost section from the Hattenbacher Triangle to Fulda and the middle section between Fulda and Schweinfurt were finally handed over to traffic in 1968.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the highway was built in the Hamburg area and the so-called north axis to Denmark and handed over to traffic. The construction took place in nine sections. An important milestone was the opening of the New Elbe Tunnel in 1975. On 13 July 1976, Ernst Haar, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Transport, and Schleswig-Holstein's Minister of the Interior Rudolf Titzck solemnly opened the motorway section from Tarp to Handewitt. Only in 1978, the last vacant space between Tarp and Schuby was closed, so that the highway could be driven from Hamburg to the federal border.
On 13 June 1978, Queen Margrethe II and President Walter Scheel opened the border crossing Ellund, accompanied by Prime Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg and the Flensburg Mayor Ingrid Gross. At 10.55 clock they officially released the freeway and passport control, at 12.32 clock rolled the first car through the new border crossing. Ellund developed into the most important transit point of German-Danish border traffic. In 1979, 3.2 million travelers passed the counters; until 1997, the number had more than quintupled at 16.7 million.
In the preliminary draft for a motor vehicle road network of Germany of the study company for automotive road construction of 1926 a highway Würzburg-Ulm-Lindau was provided, detail planning took place from 1935 to 1941. In 1969, the states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg were able to agree on a line parallel to the federal highway 19.
From 1972 first sections could be released. It started with the Berkheim section to junction Memmingen-Süd and the first 27.1 km long directional lane between Bad Grönenbach and Kempten-Leubas.
Major sections were between Kreuz Biebelried and junction Uffenheim-Langensteinach in 1980, the southern extension to the junction Feuchtwangen in 1985 and further to the junction Heidenheim opened in 1987. Since the last 6.8 kilometers to the junction Oy-Mittelberg were already released a year ago, the highway was already passable from Denmark to the Allgäu.
In 1992, the A7 was extended by another 4.9 km to Nesselwang. A few meters west of the junction of the same name is the highest motorway point in Germany: "914.081 m above sea level. NN ".
In July 1999, the opening of the border tunnel Füssen to Tyrol followed with a tube and two lanes. The tunnel is supposed to relieve the surrounding communities of the high traffic volume during vacation time. In 2005, the northern adjoining first directional lane was opened up to the county road at Gunzenberg. Until September 2009, traffic from the end of the motorway at Nesselwang was routed via various routes for cars and trucks to the border tunnel, which often led to traffic jams.
On 1 September 2009 was the official inauguration of the last 15-kilometer section, which was released more than a year late. The viaduct Enzenstetten was initially only one-way passable, as the construction-performing consortium could not complete it on time. The second half of the bridge went into operation in December 2010, to the Austrian border.