Minister of Transport Christian Bernreiter and the municipalities affected continue to resist the modernization of the Franconian-Saxony Magistrale on the Bavarian side. The plans to electrify the route from Nuremberg to Hof are to be stopped in part because, according to calculations by the Federal Ministry of Transport, the project is not economical enough, as the SZ reported some time ago. But the state government and the affected municipalities do not want to accept that. The electrification of the route is “urgently necessary in terms of traffic, structural policy and ecologically,” said Bernreiter (CSU).
He criticized the traffic light coalition: “The federal government must make quick adjustments here, the last word has certainly not yet been spoken.” A corresponding resolution is to be signed in Bernreiter’s house on Tuesday, November 15. “The expansion of the Franconian-Saxony highway has a meaning that goes far beyond Bavaria,” said Bernreiter. “It’s not for nothing that the route is part of the core network of the EU, because it connects southern Germany with the Czech Republic and is ultimately also the prerequisite for through freight traffic to Poland.”
Electrification has been demanded in the region for many years: more than 30 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, no diesel locomotives are to run from Nuremberg via Marktredwitz to Hof or Schirnding, and the electrification gap to Saxony and the Czech Republic should be closed. The Berlin Ministry of Transport currently says: “Despite the exhaustion of all identified optimization potentials”, the project is currently not economical. However: The project could be re-evaluated if traffic development is appropriate: a possibly revised evaluation methodology is taken into account.”
An important city along the Magistrale is Bayreuth – as a festival and university city, it relies on good rail connections. Closing the electrification gap here in the EU core network “would be a strong political signal for the increased western connection of the Eastern European member states of the EU and Ukraine,” said Mayor Thomas Ebersberger (CSU). However, the Federal Ministry of Transport would have ignored this national potential. “Moreover, all assessment premises were systematically interpreted to the detriment of the Franconian-Saxony highway.”
Ebersberger continued: “We demand both an immediate revision of the biased cost-benefit study and an early political decision on further planning.” Experts are convinced of the benefits of the Franken-Sachsen-Magistrale. “In addition, the federal government should take the opportunity to act anti-cyclically in the ongoing crisis and continue the project with its billion-euro investment.” The area between Hof, Nuremberg and Regensburg is considered the largest “diesel island” in Central Europe, and the Franconian-Saxony Magistrale is the busiest diesel route in Germany, emphasized the mayor. “Since obsolete locomotives and train material with particularly high diesel consumption and emissions are used here, it is also the dirtiest railway line in Germany.”
The mayor of Hof, Eva Döhla (SPD), made a similar statement: “For ecological reasons, too, it’s a farce to stick to a diesel island.” The local authorities along the route would stand together and fight together, it said. Behind the electrification would be the population and the economy of the entire region.