Construction sites are rarely completed on schedule – the larger the project, the greater the delay. This regularly causes frustration. It would be so easy to keep people happy.
In psychology, procrastination, i.e. the compulsive postponement of tasks, is considered a serious disorder. Anyone who tends to be healthy upstairs, but is dead lazy, also likes to use the word. “I’m procrastinating today” always sounds more cultivated than “I don’t feel like it” and is a popular excuse, especially among the lazybones if they prefer to whistle a spritz in the sun than, for example, tidy up their desk or do something useful .
As far as Munich is concerned, there are officially no procrastinators, at least in official offices and planning offices. Especially when it comes to construction work, everyone is very busy, be it in the building department, at the municipal works or on the railway. It would be out of place to accuse them of being sickly procrastinating or of preferring to indulge in dolce far niente. Those responsible for the second main S-Bahn line, for example, must have already destroyed tankers full of spray – even the hardest-working idler can’t get down that much.
There are, of course, many good reasons why this or that project is being delayed a bit, be it by probably ten years as with the main line, almost a year as with the Sendlinger Tor underground station, or just two weeks as is now the case with the track work for the Tram 25. It is always the harsh winds of fate that blow the makers in the face.
And those winds are almost always blowing. There is rarely a construction site in the previously officially communicated schedule, which is even more rarely the case with the people of Munich, who tend to give grants anyway. It would be quite easy to keep people happy by specifying longer construction times right from the start. Nobody talks about delays. The Stadtwerke shouldn’t have messed with the fans of Helene Fischer and Andreas Gabalier by blaming their concerts for delays at Sendlinger Tor; they don’t have to explain the delivery problems to the Harlachingen and Grünwalders, which is why the tram only runs a little later.
And if the railway had promised an opening in 2050 for the main route, everyone would praise their superhuman efforts because they made it in 2037 after only 19 years. The passengers would be happy that the train was early, and the DB could boast of having beaten the construction time of the Frauenkirche by a whole year.