Even the slip road from the A 99 to the A 8 at the Munich-South motorway junction doesn’t live up to its name, because driving would mean that something is going on. But on a normal Saturday, the madness begins here on the long, two-lane ramps of this structural monster, which then stretches into the Inn Valley near Rosenheim. Traffic jams from Kreuz Süd via Hofolding, the Holzkirchen exit to Weyarn, stop-and-go at Irschenberg and another traffic jam before the Inntal triangle. And if the A 8 is already closed at Brunnthal and Sauerlach, the alternative traffic is shifted to the surrounding streets. “It’s sheer madness. You no longer need to get in the car at the weekend,” says Brunnthal’s Mayor Stefan Kern (CSU). “For decades, everyone in Germany has known Brunnthal as a traffic jam.”
Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) now wants to solve this traffic jam, he has announced the expansion of the A 8 from the Munich-South junction to the Inntal triangle from six to eight lanes. “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” says Brunnthal’s town hall chief, Kern, and at the same time makes it clear that simply focusing on the A8 will not solve the problems in the surrounding communities in the Munich district. “What’s the use of all the expansion if the junctions are still two lanes?” Kern asks. “The bottleneck is the big problem – and that is the Munich-South motorway junction.”
The interchange has to cope with 160,000 vehicles a day
Three autobahns converge here at the Brunnthal triangle, as the interchange used to be called: the A 99, the A 8 and the A 995; The hub has to cope with up to 160,000 vehicles on busy days. And the crossings of the cross are narrow. This is one of the reasons why the federal Autobahn GmbH gives the motorway junctions in the Munich district “top priority”, as their spokesman Josef Seebacher emphasizes. However, an expansion and conversion of the Munich-South motorway junction will take years to come, because the responsible authority is pushing ahead with the expansion of the east bypass of the A 99 from north to south. Work is currently underway on the eight-lane expansion of the route near Kirchheim, and from 2024 the plans for the Munich-Ost motorway junction of the A 99 and A 94, which is also completely overloaded, are to be tackled.
The fact that Kreuz Süd is also to be expanded and the A 8 is also to be expanded to eight lanes in a future that has not yet been precisely defined has met with massive criticism. The traffic expert of the Green parliamentary group, Markus Büchler, describes Wissing’s plans as an “absolute crazy idea”. The intervention in nature and the environment is extreme, also for the residents, says the Oberschleißheimer. Rather, the alternative rail must be strengthened, with the construction of the northern access to the Brenner base tunnel, the upgrading of the Mangfallbahn and the expansion of the S 7 – and also the digitization of the railway to enable more journeys, according to Büchler.
When the A 8 is closed, there is a dense crowd at the intersection of state highways 2070 and 2078 in Aying on the way south.
(Photo: Sebastian Gabriel)
And Büchler brings another measure into play that is already being practiced in the Bavarian Inn Valley. On days with block handling for trucks on the A 93 by the Austrian authorities, roads in the Inn Valley are now closed to through traffic by the Free State. “That would also be a solution for our communities. With appropriate orders, one could obtain transit restrictions,” says Büchler.
When the A 99 and the A 8 are completely overloaded, the residents of Ayingen feel it up close. Because then many – also guided by the GPS – already turn off in Ottobrunn or Hohenbrunn on the way to the south and push their way through the rural idyll. The state roads 2070 and 2078 then become, so to speak, parallels to the A 8 motorway. “I was driving in the municipal area last Saturday and was at every intersection,” says Aying’s Mayor Peter Wagner (CSU), “and there were an incredible number of cars with foreigners License plate on the way”. Wagner welcomes Wissing’s initiative to expand the A 8: “Every measure is welcome and also relieves the local authorities.” A truck driving ban, as suggested by Büchler, has a certain charm, says Wagner: “You could try it. But you have to see where the trucks are going. We also have industry in Aying.”
It also builds up on the roads west of the A8 when the freeways are tight – for example in Sauerlach. Here, the Münchener Straße south of the A 995 and the Hofoldinger Straße west of the Salzburg autobahn, which are already overloaded during peak traffic times, become transit routes. City hall boss Barbara Bogner (independent citizens’ association) doesn’t think much of an expansion of the A8 from Kreuz Süd to the Inn valley. “That would be wasted money and the seal would be far too strong,” she says. Rather, traffic must move from road to rail.
East of the A8, Brunnthal’s Mayor Kern is thinking about when improvements could actually come for people – for example in the area of noise protection. “We mayors have been to Berlin before, when Andreas Scheuer was Minister of Transport,” he says. “I also asked the Autobahn Directorate, and they said there weren’t enough planners. What’s the current situation? I don’t know.” No one who believes that the A 8 will be expanded to eight lanes very soon sounds like that.