City plans complete demolition of the Carola Bridge

The city of Dresden wants to start rebuilding the partially collapsed Carola Bridge before the end of this decade. Construction mayor Stephan Kühn (Greens) spoke of "preferably from 2027". The administration currently favors a planning approval procedure. According to the town hall, this allows more leeway in terms of design than an identical new replacement structure and is still significantly faster than a complex planning approval procedure.

The plan is to remove the part of bridge C that lies in the Elbe by the end of the year. The demolition of the two bridges A and B not directly affected by the collapse is currently being planned; the cost and schedule also depend on the technology. Initially, their stability has priority, "so that individual ship passages will be possible from the end of January". Acoustic emission monitoring will acoustically record whether there are currently any further prestressing steel fractures.

Hope for financial support for new bridge construction

The river crossing is part of federal highway 170 and one of the most important traffic arteries, and the Elbe is also a federal waterway on which commercial shipping traffic is currently paused due to the bridge debris lying in the water and for safety reasons. To finance the urgent new construction project, the municipality is also relying on support from the Free State and the federal government - a sum of over 100 million euros is in the offing.

The western section of bridge C with streetcar lines and cycle path collapsed unexpectedly on the night of 11 September over a length of around 100 meters. A few days later, the first debris was removed and since the beginning of October, the demolition of train C of the now closed important inner-city traffic artery has been underway. However, it is currently paused due to flooding.

According to a recently submitted report, the rest of the Elbe crossing must also be demolished. Strands A and B are also at acute risk of collapse and damaged by stress corrosion, which experts have identified as the cause of the collapse. According to the experts, there is too high a risk of collapse there - they may no longer be loaded until a controlled dismantling is carried out.