A good two weeks from now, the Mittlerer Ring in Munich and everything within this limit will be taboo for diesel vehicles with emission standards 4 and worse. The city council decided just before Christmas and only exempted the Brudermühl bridge over the Isar from the environmental zone. In the district of Munich, the date of February 1st is viewed with great fear. Because some of the diesel stinkers who then have to avoid the city freeway will roll through the surrounding communities and cause more noise and bad air there. The district of Munich and the regional planning association (RPV) have to accept that. Because they cannot sue against the Munich clean air plan.
The district and RPV had already expressed their fear of alternative traffic in their statements. The release of the Brudermühlbrücke does not change anything, because according to the district office it only brings a marginal improvement, if at all, for the Isar communities of Pullach and Grünwald. The planning association had called for the middle ring between the Salzburg autobahn (A 8) and the Garmisch autobahn (A 95) to be exempted from driving bans. The district states in particular that the through traffic from north and west to south, which has previously used the Mittlerer Ring, is shifting west to Fürstenrieder and Boschetsrieder Straße. This will also result in an increase in traffic on some roads in the Munich district that are already heavily used.
Since an increase in traffic of 5,000 vehicles per day is forecast for Boschetsrieder Strasse, the district office also expects a relevant increase in traffic on Wolfratshauser Strasse (B 11), Dr.-Carl-von-Linde-Strasse and Emil-Geis-Strasse. Road to the Isar crossing in Pullach. The M 11 district road, which connects Grünwald and Oberhaching, will also result in more traffic up to the junction with the A 995 and further on to the A 8, since the Thalkirchner Isar Bridge does not seem suitable for accommodating further traffic volumes.
Especially in Pullach, Grünwald, Oberhaching and in the Würmtal people fear an additional burden
In the district, people are particularly concerned about the through roads from Pullach, Grünwald and Oberhaching as well as the Würmtal communities. Due to the lack of a southern ring road, there is no ring closure between the A 96 and A 95 as well as the A 995 outside of the Mittlerer Ring. Traffic will therefore increasingly shift to the secondary roads in the southern district of Munich. There is already a lot of traffic there. “In some cases, there is already noise pollution in the vicinity of the roads in question, as the acoustic report on traffic noise in the Munich district from August 2015 shows,” reports the district office.
From the west to the north and east there is the A 99 motorway. But it is already very busy, so the district fears a shift to the B 471 here too and thus an additional burden on the municipalities of Oberschleißheim, Garching, Aschheim, Feldkirchen and Haar. In addition, there is additional parking pressure on the surrounding communities if commuters decide to leave their cars outside the Mittlerer Ring and switch to public transport.
The district can’t do more than wait and see if everything gets that bad. “We will now monitor the development closely and then approach the city again,” says the district office. Because the district of Munich is not directly affected by the clean air plan, nor by the resulting diesel driving ban. Only the owners of the cars who are no longer allowed to drive on the Mittlerer Ring and the city center from February with the Euro 4 emission standard and from October with the Euro 5 standard could complain.
This is also how Oberhachinger mayor Stefan Schelle (CSU) sees it as chairman of the RPV. He considers the exception at the Brudermühlbrücke to be of little use, since the excluded diesel vehicles would then drive through the residential areas – including in Munich. Schelle finds: “The city has done a disservice with this.”