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Matthias Köpf
The double-track expansion of the railway line from Munich via Mühldorf to Burghausen and Freilassing, which was last planned by 2030, will probably be delayed by several years. This was announced by Deutsche Bahn Group Representative for Bavaria, Klaus-Dieter Josel, on Monday at a meeting of the project advisory board in Mühldorf. Deutsche Bahn justifies its new schedule for the billion-euro project with political decisions.
On the one hand, the state-owned company blames the Preparatory Measures Act, which came into force in 2020, for the foreseeable delay. This should make it possible to no longer approve large transport projects via planning approval procedures, but via a legislative resolution in the Bundestag. According to DB, the first effect of the expansion of the 145-kilometer railway line through Bavaria’s south-east is that certain procedural steps, such as environmental assessments, no longer have to be processed in parallel but one after the other.
According to Bahn, a further delay is caused by a replanning for the town of Weidenbach, which was requested by the community of Heldenstein and the district of Mühldorf and promised by the then Federal Minister of Transport Andreas Scheuer (CSU) last summer, where there should now be a railway bridge instead of a level crossing.
The railway line towards Mühldorf, which is used by around 15,000 commuters every day, has been in the process of being expanded since it was put into operation around 150 years ago. The current planning order dates from 2013. In the meantime, the route should enable train speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour and, in addition to regional trains and freight traffic to the Bavarian chemical triangle, also accommodate a large part of the fast passenger traffic between Munich and Salzburg.