The costs are almost twice as high as originally calculated, almost ten years later when the plan was ready – bad news about the second main line of the Munich S-Bahn, which Bavaria’s Minister of Transport Christian Bernreiter (CSU) has convened for a few days. made public to alarm the populace and politicians alike. The two green members of the state parliament, Claudia Köhler and Markus Buchler, reacted with outrage. “Our worst fears, which led us to reject the project from the start with the Greens, have been overcome,” says Kohler. And Buchler says: “Against all resistance and all recommendations from the professional world, the CSU stubbornly pushed through the most expensive and technically stupid construction project for the Munich S-Bahn. Now we have salad. As in What to Expect When You Know.”
Claudia Köhler is particularly critical of the exorbitant costs of the project, which according to the Minister of Transport are now around 7.2 million euros. “Inflation, the shortage of skilled workers, a possible shortage of materials and the consequences of war are not among them. In the final bill for 2037, we will probably be in the billions. Berlin Airport has a multiplier,” complains Unterhachinger. “The project is a bottomless pit.”
Above all, commuters and the economy in the Munich district are susceptible to delays, says Oberschleiheim Buchler and calls for a “Plan B for how things will continue now”. For this purpose, an S-Bahn north and south ring should be expanded as soon as possible so that “not everyone in the district has to drive through the city center,” says Buchler. And his MPs say that the second main route is so expensive that other important projects have fallen by the wayside, such as the double-track expansion of the S7 East, the expansion of the S7 West or the expansion of the U5 and U6.
The SPD criticizes Souder, who wants to hand over responsibility to the traffic light coalition
Not all district politicians share the Greens’ scathing criticism. The chairman of the SPD Munich-Land, Florian Schardt, called it “always easier if you later say that something was nearby”. Despite the difficulties, Ottobrunn’s man sees no alternative to another main route: “Let’s assume that at some point we will have double-track junctions everywhere – and then the Ostbahnhof and the overtaking station will become a bottleneck because we have no alternative option on the main road. What does that mean?” The fact is that Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) is now “trying to delegate responsibility to the traffic light coalition, although the Federal Minister of Transport has been with his party for twelve years and the Bavarian Minister feels like a hundred years”. Not true: “This means that people’s trust in politics is strained anyway.”
Even Otto Büzger, chairman of the Free Voters in the district, contradicts the basic criticism of the Greens: “You can save yourself the artificial enthusiasm of one or the other who always knew everything better,” the former demands of the mayor of Grasbrunn. who described the delay and cost explosion in the construction of the second trunk line as a “typical German disaster”. “But if we are serious about the mobility turnaround, we must continue to invest in the periphery and the infrastructure at the same time.” This main route is essential for the reliability of the S-Bahn, says Budger and criticizes the decision-making structures on the railways in general: “We have the S -Bahn, DB Netz AG, the Free State and the Bavarian Railways, all of whom have a say, but nobody thinks outside the box. And the citizen gets the buck if he’s confused and annoyed on stage.”
So far, there has been no comment from the CSU. District administrators Christoph Goebbels and Stephan Schell, group chairmen in the district council, could not be reached on Monday.
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