Those involved in the process do not have to wait in line for long on this rainy Thursday morning. It is precisely the long queues in the morning at the valley station and then late in the afternoon up on the mountain that the operators of the Kampenwand cable car use to justify their new construction plans. The fact that this new cable car could carry a good 1,500 passengers per hour to the Kampenwand, i.e. a good three times as many as the previous cable car, still makes some people suspicious down in Aschau im Chiemgau. They actually only found out about the whole project when the district office in Rosenheim approved it for the first time in 2017. The Association for Nature Conservation in Bavaria then filed a lawsuit against the project, which the Munich Administrative Court heard on Thursday directly in front of the valley station.
The private operator of the railway also wants as little publicity as possible during the on-site visit in Aschau. He is actually only invited to the process because the Federation for Nature Conservation is suing the Free State of Bavaria in the form of the Rosenheim district office, which last year once again approved the new building plans, which have been slightly changed by the operators in the meantime.
The authorities see the decision from June 2022 as a mere approval for changes, while the Federal Nature Conservation Association and its lawyer see it as a complete new approval. Beyond this purely formal lever, the BN is fundamentally concerned with protecting the animals and plants on the 1,669 meter high Kampenwand, which is already busy during the day in summer with all the excursionists, climbers, mountain bikers and paragliders. In the future, more than 80 special nightly trips with party guests should be allowed, criticizes the BN. For the planned new construction of the 1,461 meter high mountain station and the installation of numerous additional cable car supports, a material cable car and thus significant interventions in the sensitive protective forest are necessary, which violates nature conservation law and the European Alpine Convention.
Those involved in the process met in front of the valley station on Thursday for an on-site appointment – under a banner with a clear request from the operators to the court.
(Photo: Uwe Lein/dpa)
The Munich Administrative Court has to see all of this for itself, which is why the 24th Chamber, along with around two dozen other people involved in the process, swing onto the cloud-covered Kampenwand on Thursday morning – four of them in the red, yellow and blue four-seater gondolas like the ones here have been on the road since the current railway was built in 1957. They will also make way for colorful, but for the first time barrier-free aft cabins, namely 54 normal gondolas and 18 “experience cabins”. In total, all of this will cost more than 30 million euros, of which the Bavarian Ministry of Economics has promised around ten million euros as cable car funding.
All appeals to look at the matter in terms of monument preservation and to see the nostalgic charm of the current railway with careful modernization as an ideal marketing tool have so far been rejected by the operators and developers. Two members of the state parliament from the Green Party, who wanted to talk to them and local critics of the new building about exactly this, expelled them from the site a few months ago.
The operators say that the cable car can no longer be operated due to a lack of spare parts, and there are no cabins smaller than aft on the market, according to the operators, which the other side doubts, as do the assurances that the cable car has already been used primarily for guests from the region that with the new railway they only want to bring ten percent more people to the Kampenwand.
The BN is also concerned with protecting the black grouse
In addition to the more than 80 possible nightly special trips, it would be the sheer number of expected passengers that, from the BN’s point of view, would seriously disrupt, among other things, the rare and strictly protected black grouse on the Kampenwand – in the worst case, so severely that the entire population threatened and thus the larger-scale genetic exchange with and between the neighboring black grouse populations on the Hochries and the Geigelstein would come to an end.
After the whole company has floated back into the valley, the presiding judge also makes it clear in the oral hearing directly in front of the valley station that the protection of the black grouse could play an important role in a later judgment – together with the question of whether it would then be somewhat broader Cable car route to the Kampenwand would also touch specially protected natural forest. The Chamber therefore sees fewer problems with the Alpine Convention and other regulations, and the Chamber has apparently already answered the question of whether the most recent decision from the district office must now be considered a change or a new approval. Since there is already a cable car here, demolition and new construction are only “the most radical form of change” according to the relevant law, says the chairwoman.
The question of whether such a radical change with its many additional supports could be achieved without further intervention in the forest is not raised by the court, at least in this case. A material cable car that may be necessary for this is not a public cable car and therefore should not be approved according to cable car law, but in this case probably according to forestry law.
At the end of the oral hearing, the BN’s lawyer once again went all in on the black grouse and requested two reports on the effects on the local and supra-regional occurrence in two applications for evidence. The chamber wants to decide everything in writing: “Don’t expect that you will be able to get a verdict tomorrow.”