Soon there will be holidays in Bavaria again, and even if they only last a week in autumn, quite a few people should be on their way to a short vacation on Friday evening or at the latest on the weekend. Especially on days like this it gets tight on the Salzburg autobahn, which consists of only two lanes in each direction from the Chiemsee to the state border. There have been expansion plans for a long time, two years ago the grand coalition of the Union and the SPD in the federal government once again confirmed, despite the Court of Auditors’ express concerns about the poor cost-benefit ratio. But now red, yellow and green are negotiating a traffic light government in Berlin, and the working groups have been meeting since Wednesday. With many conservationists and other opponents of a large-scale A-8 expansion, the hope is growing that the project – probably one of the last major motorway projects in Bavaria for the foreseeable future – will disappear back into the drawer.
The Greens in the region invited to a bicycle rally against the A-8 expansion in the summer, in which several dozen cyclists took part, including the then Bundestag candidate Karl Bär. Now Toni Hofreiter from Sauerlach is negotiating for the party in the lead in the traffic light working group on mobility, and Baer expects that a concrete cross-off list will not yet be the result of these negotiations. Nevertheless, it is what would be necessary from the point of view of the new Green MP from Miesbach: to work on the federal transport route plan and to cancel all nonsensical projects such as the large A-8 expansion in order to have enough money and planning capacities for the digitization of the railways, for example to find. To do this, however, criteria will first have to be developed with the SPD and FDP as to what is useful and what is not. In any case, like the CSU, you will not be able to do it and simply have a motorway expanded, because ex-Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer lives in Traunstein and thinks that is good.
You can’t start all over again in 20 years
Ramsauer is still a member of the CSU, just like his party friend Daniela Ludwig, who not only campaigned for the expansion during her time as the Union’s transport policy spokeswoman. Ludwig agrees with many district administrators, business representatives and commuters from the region and is still of the opinion that much more needs to be done from the Chiemsee to the border than just adding a hard shoulder to the left and right, which may then be released as a lane on a case-by-case basis . In summer one lived in traffic chaos almost every day along the A 8, and that often also on the alternative routes. What is needed is “an expansion that is also sustainable” in order not to start all over again in 20 years.
In any case, it is questionable whether this would even be possible in 20 years. According to the new federal motorway company, the six-lane expansion from the Rosenheim area to the Chiemsee, which has been rescheduled in places after a few protests and public dialogues, should take at least ten years, even if the completed planning is soon approved. From the point of view of the planners, there is hardly a way to get past the full expansion to six lanes plus hard shoulder, even further east. Because if you don’t completely block the entire motorway for many years or, at best, force all vehicles into one lane, you will need practically the full width in order to be able to build sensibly at all. And there is an urgent need to build, because the A 8 essentially comes from the pre-war period and is in need of major renovation in all respects. In addition, the often required better noise protection according to the current legal situation only exists in the event of a major expansion, says the spokesman for the motorway company for southern Bavaria, Josef Seebacher.
However, the Green Karl Bär does not want to accept the noise argument, which is also put forward by a number of CSU people in the region. Then you have to change this legal situation.