At the end of the fundamental debate about Germany’s currently largest tram project, the Stadt-Umland-Bahn (StUB) from Nuremberg via Erlangen to Herzogenaurach, things even got briefly funny in the Erlangen city council on Thursday evening. CSU parliamentary group leader Christian Lehrmann took the floor, apparently upset about a mockery at his expense. He was urged to make an additional statement about “why we are demolishing the StUB,” he said.
Big laughter in the room. Why? Well, the CSU cannot tear down the tram between three important cities in the Nuremberg metropolitan region. This railway has been under debate for decades, it has been planned in Erlangen since a clearly positive referendum in 2016 at a cost of millions, and the city of Nuremberg has long since completed the expansion of the section of the route to its northern tram terminus “Wegfeld”. From Nuremberg’s perspective, things could gradually get going.
In Erlangen – so far a large city without a tram – construction has not yet begun. The CSU can therefore only tear down the long-term plans of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, which has always wanted to network its faculties at location 1 (Erlangen) and location 2 (Nuremberg); as well as the large-scale plans of a global corporation that had tied the construction of a new company headquarters costing several hundred million euros to the condition that the city-surrounding area railway was built. We’re talking about Siemens, whose “campus” in the south of Erlangen is also largely finished – in complete contrast to the tram that is supposed to bring commuters from Nuremberg and Herzogenaurach to the company.
The CSU can therefore only tear it down mentally, Lehrmann corrected to “reject”, someone in the council chamber whispered: “Freudian slip of the tongue”. One should be very precise in this context: The CSU as such neither wants to tear down the StUB in its mind, nor does it reject it. The Bavarian Interior Minister, ex-Siemensian and Erlangen CSU district leader Joachim Herrmann has been actively fighting for the project for years and is one of the supporters of the “We pro StUB” initiative. And even in the Nuremberg CSU they just roll their eyes at their colleagues from Erlangen. The tram network in Nuremberg was recently massively expanded. Mayor Marcus König (CSU) is not only considered a supporter of a rail-based transport system, he was already chairman of the tram association of the three cities involved. It is therefore not the CSU who is fighting against the tram – but rather the Erlangen CSU in particular.
Erlangen will have to pay an estimated 82 million euros in the coming years
Lehrmann justified this in the city council as follows: The benefits do not justify the effort, the project is not “without alternatives”, and the StUB is primarily a “commuter railway”. Although the (Erlanger) CSU knows about the needs of Siemens and the university, their “interest” in the three-city tram is also understandable. But they have neither “effort” nor “risk” because the tram doesn’t cost them any money. According to current estimates, the city of Erlangen will have to invest 82 million euros over several years for the planning and construction of the tram.
In Erlangen, the Free Voters’ Association, the FDP and the AfD argue similarly; they also speak out against the tram. So while outside of Erlangen many may consider the positive outcome of the referendum in June to be a foregone conclusion – the tram will be largely financed by the federal and state governments, and more than 500 million euros would flow to the north of Bavaria – this is what is seen in the Erlangen council chamber completely different.
There, only the SPD, the Greens and the “Climate List” spoke out unreservedly in favor of the StUB in the debate. The ÖDP and the Left would have liked to split the upcoming referendum: into a vote on whether the Nuremberg-Erlangen connection should be built; and one about whether the tram also connects Herzogenaurach. The latter is considered the more controversial part because of a bridge over the Regnitz.
Such a split was rejected by the majority. It would be highly questionable, explained Mayor Florian Janik (SPD), because the 2016 referendum specifically voted on a three-city tram and all three municipalities – Nuremberg and Erlangen and Herzogenaurach, headquarters of the global corporations Adidas, Puma and Schaeffler – has since been implementing this citizens’ will through a special-purpose association and jointly financing the planning. The only consensus from a memorable city council debate remained in Erlangen: Whether the tram will be built or not will be decided by the people of Erlangen on June 9th, the day of the European elections.