Car traffic is the main driver of the climate crisis in Bavaria. In 2019, cars, trucks, diesel locomotives and other means of transport in Bavaria that use fossil fuels blew 34 million tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Then came the corona lockdowns, and emissions fell to a good 27 million tons in the meantime. In the meantime, they are likely to level off again at the level of the pre-Corona period. Just like everyday life is getting back to normal. Experts assume that traffic-related CO₂ emissions currently account for around 40 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in Bavaria. Emissions from households, trade and industry, but also from electricity production, follow only behind them.
Traffic researcher Harald Kipke suggests using the money earmarked for road construction in a different way.
(Photo: Nuremberg Campus of Technology)
Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) will never be able to keep his promise to make Bavaria climate-neutral by 2040 without a fundamental turnaround in traffic. The world of experts also agrees on this. “The conversion of cars and trucks from fossil fuels to climate-neutral drives, which most politicians think of when they think of the traffic turnaround, is far from enough,” says traffic researcher Harald Kipke, for example, who teaches traffic and urban planning at Nuremberg Technical University. “No matter which scenario you look at, everyone agrees on that point.” In other words, car traffic must decrease, and dramatically less. In Kipke’s words: “If we take the climate targets seriously, we have to save a lot of car traffic and shift it to other modes of transport” – above all to rail, in passenger transport, but also to buses. According to Kipke, the money for this is available. “You can save it when building new roads and reallocate it for a climate-neutral transport system.”
Apparently, this knowledge has not arrived in politics. As ever, the Free State and the federal government are investing huge sums in road construction – and thus in classic car traffic. According to the Federal Transport Routes Plan, trunk roads with a total length of 1500 kilometers are to be built or expanded in Bavaria in the coming years. Most projects have been in the planning for decades, i.e. since times when there was no talk of the climate crisis. The costs alone for the new trunk roads in the Federal Transport Route Plan are estimated at 13 billion euros. In the past, however, such projects have usually become immensely more expensive – by a factor of 2.5 or even three. In addition, the countless new construction or expansion plans for state, county and other smaller roads are not taken into account. Below are three sample projects.
The B 15 new at Landshut
It is now almost eight years since observers thought they could see a tentative rethinking of transport policy by the state government. Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU), who was also responsible for road construction at the time, canceled the further construction of the B 15 on the other side of the Isar near Landshut in January 2015. “There is simply no consensual solution for the route,” explained Herrmann. “That’s why we will not register a placeholder route for the Federal Transport Route Plan.” As great as the joy of the opponents of the project was, the outcry was loud in business and local politics in Lower Bavaria, but also in the CSU state parliament. After eleven days, Herrmann caved in and announced that he would now register the project after all. The pressure had become too great.
The new B 15 is one of the oldest transport policy projects. The first plans date from the 1960s. At that time, a 130-kilometer autobahn was supposed to connect Regensburg, Landshut and Rosenheim. These plans have given way to those for a federal highway. But for one that eats its way through the hills like a motorway with four lanes and emergency lanes, as can be seen from the approximately 40 kilometers of completed roads in the north of Landshut. This is only logical for the road planners. Because the new B 15 is supposed to link the A 93, A 92, A 94 and A 8 motorways and “take up large-scale north-south traffic”, as they say. The project is highly controversial among the general public. A citizens’ initiative called “Stop B 15 new” has been fighting against the plans for 48 years. “The B 15 is a new burden on the environment and the climate, it is a health hazard for local residents, eats up valuable land and the economy in Lower Bavaria has boomed in the last 50 years even without it,” says Chairwoman Gisela Floegel.
The road planners are unimpressed. So far, the B 15 ends at the A 92 near Landshut. Next week starts the discussion for your next section beyond the A 92 on the Isar. Although it is only 1.8 kilometers short. But from the opponents’ point of view it is crucial. “Should it be approved, it will be clear once and for all that the project should be carried through to Rosenheim,” says Floegel. “Otherwise the construction of the immensely expensive bridge over the Isar would not make any sense at all.” The BI, the Bund Naturschutz (BN), but also communities like the 4,000-inhabitant town of Adlkofen near Landshut want to continue to defend themselves against the project – including with lawsuits.
The B 12 between Buchloe and Kempten
“Dinosaur project”, “attack on the Allgäu” – the expansion of the B 12 between Buchloe and Kempten has already been substantiated by its critics with many hearty words. Proponents argue that with the expansion, the A 96 and the A 7 would be connected in the shortest possible way for traffic, so far the route has largely had three lanes. The plans envisage 70 new bridges and a motorway-like expansion to four lanes, with no speed limit and noise barriers in many places. The BN, which recently filed a lawsuit against one of the six sections, speaks of 100 hectares of land use and one of the most climate-damaging road projects in Germany.
“This is a massive attack,” says Thomas Hanrieder from the Kempten building authority. The head of the department for major projects finds it “extremely disappointing” that the expansion now has to “take a lap of honour”. It is not clear when the Bavarian Administrative Court will start the hearing. But the conservationists don’t want a lap of honor at all, they want to get politicians to think again about the dimensions. The mood in the Allgäu proves them right, the farmers’ association is also up in arms against the plans, the state association for bird protection is protesting, municipalities are weighing complaints. The pressure on politicians is increasing. “The mood is changing,” believes Thomas Reichart from the BN. Even more metal avalanches rolling down into the mountains – that’s the last thing the people of the Allgäu want.
In the summer, the Ostallgäu district administrator Indra Baier-Müller (FW) went out of cover: she considers the plans to be “out of date” in view of the traffic turnaround and climate protection. In a letter to the Federal Minister of Transport, among others, she called for the expansion to be slimmed down, the emergency lanes to be dispensed with and a speed limit of 120 km/h to be introduced. That would save 25 hectares of space – and according to the building authority, the plans would be delayed by two to four years.
Holzkirchen southern bypass
Long queues of metal are used to in Holzkirchen, after all the market is on the direct route between Munich and Lake Tegernsee. In the village, however, it is also in Holzkirchen to a large extent the locals who become a traffic problem in their cars. And through-traffic will not be reduced by bypasses like the one that has been discussed here since the 1960s. He then drives somewhere else – in the case of the southern bypass, three kilometers across green meadows and fields, and if there is also the subsequent bypass for Großhartpenning and Kurzenberg, then another four kilometers through the countryside.
The people of Holzkirchner can decide for themselves next Sunday whether the two bypasses should be built. The municipal council has put them to a vote, and the state building authority has declared that it wants to accept the result. His planners have boiled down numerous variants to the two existing routes, which would essentially create a cross connection between the two federal roads B 13 and B 318 running in a north-south direction.
But because of this southern bypass, the people of Munich would hardly be faster at Tegernsee and back home. Of the nearly 17,000 inhabitants of Holzkirch, only the residents on two or three streets would benefit from the bypass. The BN has always seen it more as a feeder road between Bad Tölz, 20 kilometers away, and the A8. He braces himself against the plans with an alliance of associations and parties.
The alliance sees itself being patronized by the CSU-dominated town hall when it comes to putting up advertising banners. At the same time, there is also an initiative that advocates the bypass and speaks of a great relief and possible driving bans for trucks in the area. The road friends consider the Nordspange, which was built in several sections from 2002 to 2009, to be a success, as it forms a relatively local arc between the B 13 and the B 318. With a southern bypass, only a previously discussed segment in the west would be missing and Holzkirchen would be completely surrounded.
Other examples of planned concrete orgies are the new B 26 in Lower Franconia, the northern bypass for Passau and the Osttangente for Augsburg. The BN lists them and other federal road projects on the Internet. From his point of view, they all have to be deleted for climate protection. “But that’s not the only reason why the departure from the previous transport policy is overdue,” says BN boss Richard Mergner. “But also for reasons of noise and health protection and of course because of the landscape and the area consumption.” Mergner calculates that 4,305 hectares of land would disappear under concrete and asphalt if all the trunk roads that Bavaria has registered for the Federal Transport Route Plan were built. That corresponds to the fields and pastures of 140 average farms. The fact that the citizens are sometimes more advanced than the politicians and planners has recently been shown in Weilheim in Upper Bavaria. In October, the population there had to choose between eight bypass variants – and rejected them all.
