Months of dispute, an inconclusive coalition committee and now waiting for new negotiations: Ironically, the concern of the traffic light coalition to accelerate major projects is currently not getting off the ground. "Our goal is to at least halve the duration of the proceedings," says the coalition agreement on the project, which leads to serious upheavals between the FDP and SPD on the one hand and the Greens on the other.

Corinna Budras

Business correspondent in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

Superficially, the question is whether, in addition to the expansion of wind power and the rail network, road construction in Germany should also be accelerated. Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) would like to make it clear that federal highways that are firmly planned or whose construction is described as "urgent" will be in the "overriding public interest" in the future, because road traffic will increase significantly in the coming years. This trick is intended to speed up approval procedures, for example by restricting the environmental impact assessment.

This leads to a much bigger problem: that urgent or ongoing projects should not drag on for decades follows a certain logic. Therefore, the Greens are concerned with a readjustment of the entire transport infrastructure planning, also known under the sober name "Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2030", BVWP for short. It provides the legal basis for the construction of all transport projects in Germany. At the end of 2016, the current plan came into force, after several years of tough wrangling and several delays. Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) recently warned with reference to the coalition agreement "that we should actually pause to see which of the transport projects that have been laid down in the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan in recent decades still make sense under the signs of the climate crisis".

A "climate check" for the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan

Last week, the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) became even clearer: The current Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan is untenable. In order to achieve climate targets in transport, a "climate check" of the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan is unavoidable: "Until then, all highway projects should be put on ice."

This is easier said than done. Around 1300 highway projects are listed in this mammoth work of legal rank, including several that are already planned or have been started. The projects are divided into three distinct categories: "Urgent need" when they remove bottlenecks. "Firmly scheduled" are long-planned projects, the construction of which has usually already begun. The projects in the category "Further needs", on the other hand, have little prospect of realisation.

Especially in North Rhine-Westphalia and the Rhine-Main area, there are a number of projects that Wissing wants to accelerate. For example, the expansion of the Leverkusen motorway junction or the recently fiercely contested "Riederwald Tunnel" on the A 66 in Frankfurt are firmly planned. Also in this category is the controversial gap closure of the Berlin city motorway A 100, the benefits of which were hotly debated in the run-up to the re-election in the capital.

Infrastructure costs 270 billion

Wissing's ministry describes the BVWP as the "most important instrument of transport infrastructure planning" that sets the course for transport policy for the next ten to 15 years. The federal government is spending around 270 billion euros to maintain and expand the road and rail network as well as the waterways. The clear focus is on the preservation of the existing networks, 70 percent of the money flows there. Almost half of the money is used for road construction, 42 percent for rail and 9 percent for waterways.

For the environmental associations, on the other hand, the BVWP documents "age-old plans", which are essentially a wish list of the construction lobby as well as of state, municipal and constituency politicians, according to the "Green Paper on Sustainable Planning of Infrastructure" of the BUND. The advantages of planning from the point of view of the Federal Ministry of Transport, on the other hand, are: less congestion, more capacity in passenger and freight transport by rail and more economical transport options on the waterways.

For the lawyer Wissing, the BVWP is above all a legal basis to which he must comply. However, this does not mean that they cannot be changed. However, this is an extensive legislative process that Wissing initiated last December with a "dialogue procedure," as stipulated in the coalition agreement. It is likely to take much longer than the dispute over the acceleration of planning – even if it has been dragging on for an astonishingly long time. At present, it is unlikely that the now greatly inflated conflict can now be resolved in the upcoming cabinet meeting on 5 and 6 March at Schloss Meseberg. Another meeting of the coalition leaders is probably necessary to calm the waves.