| Published in Tourist Info / Highways |
Bundesautobahn 7, Germany
Map of Bundesautobahn 7, Germany. 
Bundesautobahn 7 (Federal Motorway 7, short form Autobahn 7, abbreviated as BAB 7 or A 7) is the longest German Autobahn and the longest national motorway in Europe at 963 km (598 mi). 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.
Bundesautobahn 7 starts at Flensburg and travels through the two states at Schleswig and Rendsburg, through the world's busiest artificial waterway crossing the Radar 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 A 7 at the interchange Bordesholm.
However, this can only be reached from the south, likewise from the A 215 you can only reach the A 7 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 Hamburg city 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 A 7 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 the Hannover 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 the airport Hannover and ends at the A 2, which leads to Dortmund.
The following motorway junctions of the A 7 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 A 7.
South of Hildesheim, the A 7 enters the low mountain range, the landscape 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 expanded six-lane.
Passing the university town, the A 38 branches off at Dreieck Drammetal to Leipzig. Then the A 7 leads over steep gradients and slopes into the Werratal near Hann. Münden and you are in 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 (Ohm) between the junctions Alsfeld-West and Homberg (Ohm) 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 A 7 sections four-lane expanded, leads past Fulda, where the A 66 branches off to Hanau and reaches Bavarian territory.
Crossing the Rhön, pass Schweinfurt (cross with the A 70 to Bayreuth) and Würzburg to the Biebelried intersection, where the A 3 Ruhrgebiet-Frankfurt am Main-Nürnberg-Passau is crossed. Here was the southern end of the A 7 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 (intersection with the A 6 Saarbrücken-Heilbronn-Nuremberg- Waidhaus) 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 (Luxembourg-Karlsruhe-Stuttgart-Munich-Salzburg) is crossed. South of Ulm it goes through the Illertal parallel to the river back to Bavaria, via Memmingen (cross with the A 96 Lindau Munich) and Kempten (branch to the A 980 to Oberstdorf), 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.
Length: 963 km (598 mi)
Junctions
North end: Danish border
South end: Austrian border
States: Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Hesse, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria
Source
• www.wikipedia.org
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