The construction of an expressway northwest of Würzburg, which has been controversial for years, has to be stopped due to planning failures, according to nature conservationists. For example, the environmental impact of the new federal highway 26 (B26n) has only been insufficiently or not at all taken into account, the Federal Nature Conservation Association in Bavaria announced on Tuesday. The renunciation of the road had not been examined. The populations of various animal species were partially recorded incompletely. “On the whole, the documents submitted so far are simply unsuitable for properly addressing the issues of climate protection.” The project could not be approved.
In July, the government of Lower Franconia initiated the so-called plan approval procedure for the first construction phase – between Karlstadt and the Schweinfurt / Werneck motorway junction. “We sift through all the objections that have been received,” said the spokesman for the district government, Johannes Hardenacke, in Würzburg. Care and thoroughness are benchmarks in such extensive planning approval procedures.
In a plan approval procedure, individual issues relating to development or noise and environmental protection are examined. Then it is determined where what can be built with which conditions. Private individuals can raise objections – for example, the depreciation of land as a result of the project. The procedure ends with a plan approval decision, a kind of building permit. Opponents of such construction projects can still go to court against such a decision.
Citizens and conservationists have protested against the B26n for decades. According to the planners, the 49-kilometer expressway should have two lanes in each direction and branch off from Autobahn 3 west of Würzburg. From then on, the route leads via Karlstadt (Main-Spessart district) to Werneck (Schweinfurt district) and thus to the A 7.