“We pay taxes!” shouts an angry citizen from the crowd into the babble of voices. “That’s a joke,” shouts another. A little more than ten minutes after the opening of the discussion, Gesa Tiedemann (Greens) from the Schwabing-West district committee threatened to cancel the event. Together with her counterpart Patric Wolf (CDU) from Schwabing-Freimann, the BA boss is leading a public information event at which representatives of the Munich Transport Company (MVG) and the urban mobility department want to present and discuss the first planning section of the planned Nordtangente tram.
MVG intends to build a new tram route over 1.2 kilometers in the first section from Schwabinger Elisabethplatz via Franz-Joseph- and Leopoldstrasse to Münchner Freiheit. According to the plan sketches, the following plan sections number two and three, which are not even up for discussion this evening, run through the English Garden and on to Johanneskirchen. The aim of the project is to relieve “highly loaded inner-city stops”. Neuhausen and Johanneskirchen should be better connected in the future, making it easier to avoid the busy city center. According to the mobility department and MVG, the traffic volume in local public transport will increase in the next few years. In its forecasts, it is already assuming that there will be 28,000 passengers a day in the so-called “West branch” on Franz-Joseph-Straße alone.
Many of the assembled citizens doubt these calculations several times. “Where do the usage figures come from?” asks resident Yacine Coco. You and others tell of frequent empty buses in Schwabing and assume that the number of passengers is overestimated. Anja Wetzel from the MVG appeased. Traffic planning is about “the peak hours”, i.e. the times when the traffic network is most heavily used. Her colleague Ulrich Osthöver assures that it is a “renowned procedure”, but does not elaborate further. In any case, the MVG is based on “relatively conservative forecasts”. Stefanie Diesch from the mobility department explains and, if necessary, underlines the arguments of the MVG.
The participants in the information event were dissatisfied with the evasion of the question of financing the project. “You have an explanation for everything, you just don’t know anything about the costs,” complains Hiltraud Pfeiffer-Wetcke to applause. City councilor Thomas Schmid (CSU) adds a little later: “We’ve been asking about the costs for a year and a half. The CSU city council faction is against this tram tangent.”
MVG and mobility department will be closed this evening. It shouldn’t be cheap, as those responsible are planning new routes and cycle paths, which will lead to the planned cycle expressway in Leopoldstrasse. “How many parking spaces will this eliminate?” asks a listener. 184 parking spaces will disappear completely, and another 78 will be converted into resident parking spaces on Leopoldstrasse. The desire for more electric buses has been expressed several times, but the planners are convinced of the tram.
Co-moderator Patric Wolf recorded 27 requests to speak in the atrium of the Oskar-von-Miller-Gymnasium and a handful of the 50 online participants after two and a half hours of heated discussions. In the invitation to the meeting, which had been convened at short notice, Wolf saw the only possibility “for citizens to express themselves before the two BA […] have their say and can present their suggestions, wishes and criticism”. In the coming weeks, the district committees will vote on the project, followed by the city council.
Despite the tight time management of the event, many detailed questions could be answered, but core questions about costs, traffic and e-mobility were partially neglected. On May 13, before the city council deals with the project, the MVG itself organizes another online event “as information on the current project status”.
Public interest in the Tram-Nordtangente extends beyond Schwabing. Among the guests were city councilors and the Vice President of the Landtag, Wolfgang Heubisch (FDP). For the employees of the MVG and the mobility department, the evening in Schwabing is one of the milder ones on request. You know the emotional discussions with neighbors and local politicians when construction is going on in front of your own front door.