The building, designed by Wilhelm Tiedje in architectural terms, is a 292 m long cable-stayed bridge with semi-fan system.

It was opened on 29 April 1991 as a single-track bridge and upgraded in 2000 with additional superstructure to support a second track and put into operation on 12 May 2000.

The railway bridge consists of two parallel sections of welded superstructures of steel truss construction, both 292 metres long, resting on a common central pillar.

It had a length of 276 m and a load capacity of 4 t. Individual balks could be withdrawn in order to allow the passage of ships and rafts.

[4] When there was ice on the Rhine, the pontoon bridge had to be dismantled for safety reasons and towed into the harbour.

On 21 March 1945, an American artillery grenade hit a detonator and thereby triggered the demolition of the bridge prepared by German troops (see Operation Undertone).

It was built on four electric pylons, which were supported by a large number of steel pipes which had been driven into the ground.

The decision of the Struktur- und Genehmigungsdirektion Süd ("Structure and authorisation directorate south", a regional body of Rhineland Palatinate) in Neustadt an der Weinstraße favoured a modified option I: the link to B 9 in the west would partly run over the route of today's district route 25 (Wörther Hafenstraße).

A small forest area would be crossed on low pillars, in order to maintain existing animal migrations paths and biotopes.

There were two proposals from the Landesbetrieb Mobilität Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate state authority for mobility) for the connection from option I to the west and one produced by a citizens initiative.

[5] The Karlsruhe town council decided by majority to issue a negative opinion on the planning on 24 May 2011.

[9] In order to clarify open questions and to resolve information deficits, the two new state governments agreed to carry out a fact check on 18 and 22 November 2011 in Karlsruhe and to the subsequent establishment of a working group called Leistungsfähige Rheinquerung ("Efficient Rhine crossing"), which ended in November 2012.

This advocacy led to the separation of, on the one hand, the study of traffic issues on the Palatinate side and increased capacity and improved road safety from, on the other hand, security against the failure of the Rhine crossing in the case of road or shipping accidents.

[10][11] One day before the discussion, Federal Minister of Transport Peter Ramsauer visited the bridge and described it as "the worst bottleneck in Germany".

Baden-Württemberg has also designated a replacement bridge on the route of the B 10 for the Bundesverkehrswegeplan (federal transport plan).

[14] The Federal Court of Audit has found the project to be neither necessary nor economic, because the traffic problem it seeks to resolve is the result of a bottleneck in Karlsruhe not at the Rhine bridge.