The Aakerfährbrücke is a four-lane road bridge over the Ruhr in Duisburg. It connects the Duisburg districts of Duissern and Meiderich. It belongs to an ensemble of bridges, which the route of industrial culture calls the Ruhrau Bridge Landscape.
The Ruhr was crossed on a ford in this area since the early days of settlement. Later the Ruhr was crossed on a ferry (called Aaker ferry) mentioned for the first time in 1359, most recently about 150 meters downstream of today's bridge.
In order to do justice to the steadily increasing traffic volume at the end of the 19th century, the first fixed Ruhr crossing was built between 1902 and 1904. Named after the former ferry Aakerfährbrücke, this was planned by the bridge building company Harkort (Duisburg) and decorated by the Berlin architect Bruno Möhring. Since March 24, 1907, the tram route from Burgplatz to Meidericher Südbahnhof also crosses the Aaker ferry bridge.
This bridge was badly damaged in the autumn of 1944, but was opened to traffic again in almost unchanged form in 1946.
After the volume of traffic and vehicle loads had risen steadily over the decades, structural damage in the early 1990s necessitated a completely new building. After the old bridge was demolished, a 180-meter Krupp Type D makeshift bridge was placed on the old abutments, over which the tram was guided on a single track, while road traffic was largely diverted.
To the east, parallel to the makeshift bridge, a generously dimensioned arched bridge was built, which in addition to four lanes also includes pedestrian and cycle paths that are wide on both sides. Until the above-ground tram line from Duissern to Meiderich was discontinued in 2000, the tram shared the middle lanes with the road traffic, the tracks on the bridge are still to this day.
Source: wikipedia.de