If the main artery is clogged and can no longer be decalcified quickly, the bypass has to bear the brunt. This is the case in medicine as well as in traffic – and can be observed regularly in the east of the district of Munich. The main artery there is the eastern bypass of Munich. The A 99 is considered to be one of the most heavily used autobahns in Central Europe, which, despite the current expansion to eight lanes, repeatedly reaches the limits of its resilience and becomes a traffic jam. The federal highway 471 is to serve as a bypass, but it leads through several densely populated communities and is also considered to be chronically overloaded.
Half a million euros for a study
And so a project keeps popping up in the traffic planning of the district that should finally get traffic flowing: the Autobahn parallel to the A 99 as a replacement for the B 471. It should be an alternative that is as consistent as possible and free of crossings when you are on the Autobahn standstill again. This Monday, the mobility committee of the district council wants to launch a corresponding feasibility study. Costs: half a million euros – for a project that will very likely never be realized in this way.
If the Greens in the district council have their way, it should no longer even be checked whether an alternative route to the A 99 is even feasible. “That’s completely out of date,” says Markus Büchler, transport policy expert for the Greens parliamentary group and district councilor. “We already have bypasses and a motorway that will be expanded anyway – I won’t build another bypass after all.” According to Büchler, who lives on the B 471 in Oberschleißheim himself, that was an absolute crazy idea ten years ago.
If the eastern bypass of the A 99 is closed, traffic in the eastern district of Munich will primarily shift to the B 471.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
What an alternative could look like can be observed in Aschheim, and also a little further north at the Aschheim/Ismaning junction. So far, only one component of a possible motorway parallel has been realized on Aschheimer Flur, a huge roundabout on the eastern bypass. At the motorway exit in the direction of Ismaning, a gigantic cross in the form of an octopus eats into the landscape, paired with a roundabout on the B 471 that also saves little space. Here in the north, motorized private transport still has priority, but it does not always flow consistently.
That was not always the case here near the reservoir and the Middle Isar Canal. Up until the 1970s, the Ismaninger cabbage heads were able to grow emission-free; until the A 99 was built, heavy goods traffic had to drive south and north through the state capital. With the opening of the eastern bypass, however, the traffic collapse has shifted to the district of Munich – to the A 99 and the B 471.
The leader of the Social Democrats in the district council, Florian Schardt, therefore considers a feasibility study for an additional parallel motorway to be sensible – even if he does not expect that a new route could actually come out as a result. “But such a study could show where improvements can be made for residents in the individual communities,” says Schardt, SPD direct candidate for the state elections in the Munich-North constituency. “Because they suffer the most when traffic shifts from the Autobahn to the federal highway.” The people in Feldkirchen, Haar, Putzbrunn and Hohenbrunn are particularly affected.
District administrator Christoph Göbel (CSU), a supporter of the feasibility study, also has doubts that the parallel motorway will come at all, he said two years ago that it could by no means be a “cure-all” to solve the traffic problems in the district. Back then, he indirectly indicated that the study could also represent something like a final nail in the coffin for the project. However, an expensive one.
However, traffic expert Büchler also knows how difficult it will be to quickly achieve improvements for the municipalities and above all for the residents. “An important, free measure would certainly be to implement what is in the traffic light coalition agreement: that is, that the municipalities themselves decide how through-towns are calmed down with a speed limit of 30 or crossings.” That’s not a “dream solution” either, according to the Green, “but it’s not a new bypass either.” He demands that there must be an end to the further expansion and new construction of roads.
A planning office is scheduled to start the feasibility study this spring, and the final result could then be available in the summer of 2024. It is quite possible that this will then disappear in a drawer, just like the elaboration on the ring closure of the A 99 in the southern district of Munich.