Climate activists of the “last generation” have now discovered what can be done with concrete. On Wednesday they poured concrete onto a bridge in central Berlin. The activists proclaimed that this would be used “for a more meaningful purpose than the construction of new climate-damaging motorways”. And before the police could clear the spot, it had partially cured. It can go so fast.
In fact, the federal government has completely different plans for the concrete, and speed also plays a role here. Power lines, wind turbines, railway lines – all of this is to be expanded, and faster than before. Rows of old motorway bridges are to be renovated, and preferably as quickly as possible: the traffic light coalition wants to halve the duration of the approval process. But does that also apply to the construction of new motorways?
The FDP wants to change laws accordingly, the Greens are vehemently against it. A first coalition summit with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) at the end of January was supposed to settle the dispute – in vain. Now, according to information from government circles, a decision is to be made by a coalition committee in March. There is a lot of talk, you are looking for an appointment to finally end the dispute. But how? The Southgerman newspaper answers the most important questions.
Why is acceleration even important?
German governments have been working on the duration of approval procedures for 30 years. There are now half a dozen acceleration laws related to the construction of power lines. However, many procedures still take a very long time. The construction plans for a wind turbine alone lie with various authorities for an average of two years before they are approved.
But now the construction of floating liquefied natural gas terminals has shifted all the standards: within eight months, not only were the necessary jetties and pipelines ready, but also the permits. A stipulation that the legislature has also made for green electricity systems and power grids helped: They are in the “overriding public interest” and serve “public safety”. This should make it easier for the authorities to decide on a project. And it is precisely this path that Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) would now like to choose for federal trunk roads – at least for projects that the Federal Transport Route Plan considers “priority”.
Why is more speed so controversial when building new motorways?
In the plans, the different traffic concepts of the Greens and the FDP collide. While the FDP wants to push the expansion of the railways and trunk roads, the Greens want to speed up the railways in particular. The situation is complicated by the fact that both sides can refer to different passages in the coalition agreement due to vague formulations.
Most recently, the Ministry of Transport made a new bill to pave the way. According to a new traffic forecast, road freight traffic will increase by 54 percent by 2051 compared to 2019 – Minister Wissing predicts that most of the growth will end up here. The expansion of freeways is therefore imperative. The Greens, on the other hand, argue that if you accelerate everything, you end up accelerating nothing. In fact, road construction authorities are already working at the limit. A state transport minister warns that there is a lack of capacity for further new construction projects, or they will be at the expense of the important renovation. The same concern drives friends of the railway. “With the accelerated expansion, rail and road are competing for one and the same skilled workers,” says Dirk Flege, head of the Pro-Rail Alliance. “So more motorway construction means fewer new rail routes.” This contradicts the climate goals in transport.
It is also controversial whether the climate argument against new autobahns is valid. After all, over the course of the next decade, road traffic in Germany should also become largely emission-free. Many of the new roads will not be finished much sooner.
Does the “overriding public interest” mean that concerns about nature, the environment or local residents are undermined?
Approval is always partly the result of consideration. Are other so-called “protected goods” so badly affected by a project that it cannot be approved? In this consideration, the weights are shifted by the determination. “This does not establish an absolute priority, but a relative one,” says the Würzburg environmental lawyer Frank Sailer, who deals with the expansion of renewable energies at the Environmental Energy Law Foundation. “That doesn’t mean that environmental standards will be lowered.” But authorities would have more certainty when making decisions.
Conversely, in the case of a decision against the public interest in court, it is no longer the applicant who has to prove why the authority is wrong – but the authority has to prove why it considered other protected goods to be more important. “I’m absolutely certain that planning processes could be noticeably accelerated as a result,” says Pro-Rail Alliance man Flege.
At which points is there the greatest need for expansion and renovation in the infrastructure?
“Nodes in the conurbations, bridges and locks” are the neuralgic points in Germany for Florian Eck from the German Transport Forum. “Some of the locks are from the imperial era, as are some of the Deutsche Bahn signal boxes.” Many experts see it the same way. The renovation costs alone devour a large part of the budget, and there is not enough money for new, ambitious projects.
However, Eck considers the way the Greens are planning to build motorways more slowly and railways more quickly to be too short-sighted. A clear prioritization of the construction projects is necessary. But the dismantling of bureaucratic hurdles must include all modes of transport. “Politics currently lack a vision of what mobility 2030, 2040, 2050 can look like and an inventory of what is possible by then and what we can pay for,” says Eck.
How much money is actually available and how are the funds distributed between road, rail and water?
Almost 270 billion euros are earmarked for infrastructure in the 15-year Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan, roughly 50 percent for trunk roads, 40 percent for rail and 10 percent for waterways. The problem: Everything is based on prices from 2016 or even earlier. In the past two years alone, according to traffic expert Eck, construction costs have risen by 20 percent. This means around four billion euros in additional financial requirements.
In addition, the Federal Transport Route Plan is a lot of “wishes and clouds”. How the projects are then specifically financed is not stated there. There is another set of rules for this: the investment framework plan of the Ministry of Transport, which is designed to last several years. Ultimately, however, it depends on the budget negotiations between the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Finance how much money is available each year. It is currently around 16.5 billion euros for all modes of transport together.
In addition, the costs for new transport projects are regularly estimated far too optimistically. “An important criterion in the selection of projects at the political level is that the projects must not be too expensive. So there is an incentive to reduce the costs,” says Urs Maier from the think tank Agora Verkehrswende.
How do other countries regulate infrastructure expansion?
Austria is going the opposite way, according to the mobility master plan: Every infrastructure project is examined to see whether it could violate Austria’s climate goals. “The hurdles for new motorway projects are of course higher. Because many are opposed to the climate goals because they cause more traffic,” says Günther Lichtblau from the Austrian Federal Environment Agency. In fact, the government in Vienna is planning to reduce private car traffic by 25 percent by 2040. New motorway construction is not ruled out in the future. But planners have to prove that the population’s need for mobility cannot be satisfied in any other way.
The German Greens should look enviously at Austria, because there climate protection and transport are in one hand – with the Green Minister Leonore Gewessler. It stopped a number of ongoing new construction projects in the road sector until they passed the climate check.
What could a compromise in the dispute look like?
It is likely that both sides will have to approach each other and only prioritize a small list of highway projects. In addition, the dispute could become part of a solution package. Because the coalition is also divided on additional climate measures in transport. Transport Minister Wissing wants to weaken the climate laws – which have so far regularly forced him to do more climate protection in transport. Further talks are planned for March, now under difficult conditions: After the defeat in the Berlin elections, the FDP wants to sharpen its profile. That doesn’t make compromises any easier.