Haar’s Mayor Andreas Bukowski (CSU) failed in his attempt to make a crucial decision when planning a tramway extension from Munich to Haar. On Tuesday evening, the municipal council rejected the proposal from the town hall to rule out a route through Leibstrasse in Haar. Some councilors were irritated by Bukowski’s actions: the plans for a tram to Haar are at the very beginning. The discussion has so far been in the district council and in the city of Munich and has not yet started in Haar itself. This is the first time that the issue has come up in the council. The municipal councils also had no documents to assess the complex project.
A tram would bring Haar a little closer to Munich. The S-Bahn takes you from the train station to Marienplatz in 17 minutes. With the tram you would be in Berg am Laim in 17 minutes. It would only be a short hop to Trudering every ten minutes. Of course, a bus has been running for a long time, but the tram would allow completely different passenger numbers. A planning study envisages straight tracks on the B 304. More than 100 million euros would be invested. The line could run from Grünwald through the city to Haar. The south of the county would be linked to the east.
For him, the central shopping street in the community is “taboo,” according to Mayor Bukowski
This is how Florian Orth from the Intraplan office in Munich outlined it on Tuesday evening, who was connected online to the municipal council meeting in the community center. He gave a fast-forward lesson. Anyone who didn’t follow district politics very closely last year learned that terminal stops at Jagdfeldring and in Neukeferloh had already been discussed and then discarded. The planners now favor turning the tram at the corner of Wasserburger Straße/Leibstraße and running it via the train station to Lindenplatz, because that promises the most passengers. The planners referred to Maximilianstraße in Munich, where pedestrians and trams harmonize well in one traffic area. But a tram on Leibstrasse, the central shopping street in Haar? Mayor Bukowski said: “For me, Leibstrasse is taboo.”
Some councilors felt overwhelmed. Ulrich Leiner (Greens) said there was “no need at all” to make a decision now under time pressure. The tram project is in an early stage of development. From the invitation to the meeting he could not even infer that the tram project would be presented in a presentation. Peter Paul Gantzer (SPD) felt the same way. He said: “I saw the report here for the first time.” It was also learned from several municipal councils that they had not received any in-depth information about the reports prepared so far in the documents for the meeting.
The final stop could be the Finckwiese on Wasserburger Straße
There is a need for discussion in Haar, mainly because of the course of the route. The municipality itself has just commissioned planners with an integrated urban development concept (Isek), who are concerned with how Leibstrasse can be upgraded as a shopping street. It is controversial whether a tram is just the right thing because it takes visitors from Trudering to local shops. So far, business people have mainly feared that parking spaces would be lost. Before he was elected mayor, Bukowski headed the trade association and campaigned for its interests. Now the town hall justified the refusal for the tram in Leibstraße with “interventions in the local design”.
A no to the Leibstrasse tram was not welcomed, at least not at the early stage. The municipal council unanimously agreed on a formula that states that the tram project is viewed positively. In the case of Leibstrasse, “implementation risks” should be taken into account and alternative routes should be examined that also connect Unterhaar in the east of the municipality. In a statement, the town hall has already suggested a final stop at Finckwiese and the outer Wasserburger Straße.