The citizens and communities between Grafing and Kiefersfelden should be able to get involved in the planning of two additional tracks towards the Brenner, as Deutsche Bahn said almost ten years ago. The railway planners had adopted the procedure for this from their Austrian colleagues, who at that time had long since buried a third and fourth track to the Brenner Base Tunnel in the Inn Valley, without there being any major resistance to this. In Bavaria, however, the consensus was suddenly over when the planners drew the first lines on the map.
In the Rosenheim district alone, almost 20 local citizens’ initiatives and the Nature Conservation Association have been campaigning against the now almost finished planning. Just in time for the turn of the year, the affected municipalities have also formulated their core demands for the further process. This certainly won’t make the billion-dollar project any cheaper, but they would prefer to prevent it anyway.
The railway and the then Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) had already decided on a route in 2021, two-thirds of which would run underground along its 54 kilometers through the Rosenheim district. The high proportion of tunnels raised the cost estimate back then to seven billion euros, which, based on all experience, is unlikely to remain at that level. Especially since the state spatial planners in the government of Upper Bavaria have instructed the planners to cross under the Inn twice if possible, instead of building significantly cheaper bridges in both cases.
In the south, planners have met this requirement. The new high-performance route will first come to the surface between Flintsbach and Oberaudorf and then intertwine with the two existing tracks, which run through the towns on the left bank of the Inn and could have more capacity for local transport in the future. This junction, which is hundreds of meters long, is supposed to be right next to the A 93. But even there, in what is already the narrowest part of the Bavarian Inn Valley, it costs a lot of agricultural land. The communities in the Inn Valley have therefore long been calling for the connection point in the tunnel to disappear – specifically in the Wildbarren, a mountain range that borders the valley in the west.
The railways and the federal government reject this solution, which involves extreme effort, and are relying on studies that show that an underground connection point is not compatible with the current regulations for safe rail operations. Seven Bavarian and three Tyrolean Inntal communities have now countered this with an investigation in which three engineering offices from Germany, Austria and Switzerland have come to the conclusion that underground connection points can be approved under certain circumstances. This is exactly what the Inn Valley communities are now basing their core demands on, which they are addressing to the Bundestag regarding the major project.
The Brenner Base Tunnel could go into operation in 2032
The municipalities have until the end of January to submit such demands to the Federal Railway Authority. They will probably not reach the Bundestag until 2025, when MPs will finally vote on whether Germany will actually build the two additional tracks to the Brenner Base Tunnel, as the federal government promised the Austrians in a state treaty in 2012. Meanwhile, the Austrians and Italians are continuing to drive the Brenner Base Tunnel, which is largely co-financed by the EU, under the main Alpine ridge. As things stand, it could go into operation in 2032.
There will be no new northern access to the Brenner on the Bavarian side by then, but the capacity of the two existing tracks will still be sufficient for a while, according to railway information. The assembled citizens’ initiatives deny that the planned new construction will ever be necessary and instead suggest a gradual expansion of the existing route. Reliable proof that the new route is needed is also one of the core demands from the municipalities.
The city of Rosenheim, which is to be bypassed in a wide loop to the northeast on the new route, has fewer fundamental objections to the plans than its more severely affected surrounding area. Rosenheim could receive a lot of freight train traffic from the city thanks to the new high-performance route, but at the same time it does not want to be left behind by the fast passenger traffic between Munich, Innsbruck and Verona. From the point of view of the Rosenheim city council, the tracks north of the city should also cross under the Inn instead of running over a long bridge as planned. “Any other plan cannot be accepted.”