30 km/h on the Mittlerer Ring is coming: The government of Upper Bavaria, as the legal supervisory authority, has nothing against the city tightening the speed limit for all road users in the Landshuter Allee area. It should apply between Dachauer Straße (Parkharfe Olympiapark) and Arnulfstraße (Donnersbergerbrücke). The speed limit is intended to reduce exhaust emissions on Landshuter Allee so that the limit value for nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), which has been exceeded for years, is adhered to.
On April 24th, the city council decided to introduce a 30 km/h speed limit on the affected section of the Middle Ring with a narrow majority of SPD/Volt and CSU/Free Voters, thereby reacting to a ruling by the Bavarian Administrative Court. He had obliged the city to comply with the limit value for nitrogen dioxide after the German Environmental Aid and the German Transport Club had sued the city.
Both Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) and the city council wanted to avoid extending the existing diesel driving ban to vehicles with emissions class Euro 5. In doing so, they ignored the concerns of environmental advisor Christine Kugler, who had expressly pointed out that the court had called for the driving ban to be tightened.
A driving ban for Euro 5 diesel vehicles would correspond to stage two of the air pollution control plan that has already been adopted, which the city council suspended in the summer of 2023. The stricter driving ban was originally supposed to come into force on October 1, 2023.
Now the speed limit should help. It is not clear when it will come, but it should be introduced as quickly as possible. Whether it will achieve anything will only become clear in a few months. According to the environmental department, it could even have a negative impact on the measured values on Landshuter Allee, as there is a particularly large amount of heavy goods traffic at this point. And according to studies, this causes higher emissions at 30 km/h than at 50 km/h.
In addition, the speed limit only has a positive effect on exhaust emissions when traffic is flowing. But that was the case with only three percent of the traffic volume on Landshuter Allee, argued the environmental department. In contrast, 60 percent of traffic was in stop-and-go mode.
The limit value for NO₂ is 40 micrograms per cubic meter of air on an annual average. While it is now observed at almost all measuring points in the city, the value on Landshuter Allee was still 45 micrograms. The limit value was also exceeded at the measuring point on Moosacher Strasse, which was only created last year. Here, new traffic light switching is intended to regulate traffic in such a way that exhaust emissions are reduced.