Transportation

The port of Bremerhaven is the sixteenth-largest container port in the world and the fourth-largest in Europe with 4.9 million Twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) of cargo handled in 2007. In addition, more than 1,350,000 cars are imported or exported every year via Bremerhaven. Bremerhaven imports and exports more cars than any other city in Europe except for Rotterdam, and this traffic is also growing. In 2011 a new panamax-sized lock has been opened, replacing the 1897 Kaiserschleuse, then the largest lock worldwide.

 Roads

Due to its unique geographic situation, Bremerhaven suffers from a few transportational difficulties. The city has been connected to the autobahn network since the late 1970s. The A 27 runs north-south, east of the city, connecting Bremerhaven to Bremen and Cuxhaven. Road connections to Hamburg, however, are poor. The Bundesstraße 71 and secondary roads therefore carry most of the heavy lorry traffic. A proposed solution is the construction of the A 22, the so-called Küstenautobahn (or "coastal motorway"), which would link Bremerhaven to Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven/Oldenburg (using the Weser tunnel). Roads leading to the overseas port are regularly overloaded with freight traffic, and solutions are presently being discussed, including a deep-cut road favoured by the city government and various interest groups.

 Railway

Bremerhaven has three active passenger rail stations, Bremerhaven Hauptbahnhof in the city centre, Bremerhaven-Lehe north of the centre and Bremerhaven-Wulsdorf in the southern part of the city. A fourth station, Bremerhaven-Speckenbüttel near the border to Langen has been out of service since 1988, though it might reopen when the Bremen S-Bahn scheme becomes operational. Bremerhaven's central station lost its last long-distance train in 2001. Now only regional connections to Bremen, Cuxhaven, Osnabrück and Hamburg are available. The railways in Bremerhaven, however, still carry a heavy load of freight traffic, mostly new cars, containers and food.