As is well known, Goethe lets his Mephisto philosophize “It would be better if nothing were to happen” – if you asked some residents of the southern district what they think of the plans for the railway, they would probably say something similar. At least given the choice of which of the routes presented a few weeks ago should be built. In fact, a development is becoming apparent in the district of Ebersberg that has been observed further south for a few years: not only is the expansion of the Brenner route met with resistance, it also meets with great support from the population. And the railways wanted to do everything better this time.
In the district of Rosenheim, the protest was also sparked by the large number of possible routes, in the end nobody could really be sure that freight trains wouldn’t thunder through their own garden in a few years. Efforts were therefore made in the Ebersberg district firstly to keep the number of variants low and secondly to include those who might be affected by the new building. The former is reasonably successful, there are only four rough routes, of which the western one is rather unlikely and the two eastern ones are very similar, plus a middle one, which is furthest away from the settlements and which is probably the basis for the final version .
The second point, however, to carry out this planning with the involvement of the residents and other affected parties, did not work out so well. Of course: It was clear from the start that there would be no variant that everyone would be happy with. However, the fact that there only seems to be variants with which everyone is dissatisfied suggests certain deficits in the so-called dialogue forum – specifically with regard to the first part of the word. The catalog of questions formulated by the participants from the district is an indication of a dialogue that is not running smoothly: six pages, twelve main categories and a total of 74 individual questions are listed in it. Deutsche Bahn has not responded to all of these, the participants in the dialogue complain and emphasize that it will only make sense to work together again in the Bahn Forum once this has changed.
By the way, one of the most interesting questions is found relatively at the beginning of the catalogue: “What specifications from the client would you need in order to be able to implement an existing variant?” In fact, railway representatives had always emphasized in the past that the federal government, as the client, ultimately decides what is actually built – so one can be curious: on the one hand for the answer and on the other hand whether and how the client reacts to it.