Located at the east side of Rotterdam, it crosses the New Meuse (Nieuwe Maas), a major distributary of the river Rhine.
Traffic exceeds 235,000 vehicles crossing the bridge daily,[1] using four 3-lane carriageways, in an express versus local / distributor arrangement.
[2] In 1990 the bridge received a major upgrade, by the addition of a second, almost identical arch (305 m long and slightly broader) right next to its west flank, doubling its traffic capacity.
Approximately 500 of these ships require the bridge to be opened, a process which takes 18 minutes total.
An electro-mechanical failure on 17 March 2006 left the bridge open for about an hour, on the middle of day, causing traffic jams up to 7 kilometres in length.