In the dispute over the tram through the English Garden, Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) is making serious accusations against the Bavarian state government. If you follow an open letter from Reiter to Florian Herrmann (CSU), the head of the State Chancellery, then the representatives of the Free State not only made incorrect calculations, but also gave incorrect information about the comparison of the plans.
In the justification for the surprising ban on building the new tram line through the English Garden, the Free State “obviously derived the wrong numbers and conclusions,” writes Reiter. He calls on the state government to show a willingness to talk “with a view to finding a good solution”.
A main point of contention is the question of how much land needs to be resealed to build the tram line. It should run on the existing street between the beer garden at the Chinese Tower and Thiemestrasse, but according to current planning it still needs land to the left and right of it. In its calculation, the Free State adds an additional 35 percent to the current road area. The state chancellery said it was too much of an intervention in the monument and too dangerous for park visitors.
However, according to Mayor Reiter, 9,570 square meters are earmarked for the tram track as a sealed area in the city’s planning, while the current bus route covers 8,300 square meters. The city’s calculation experts therefore estimate 1,270 square meters of additional sealing, an increase of 15 to 16 percent. That’s 20 percentage points less than the country’s calculation.
Mayor Reiter calculates in detail how wrong the Free State’s calculation is from the city’s perspective. It takes the route of around 840 meters through the English Garden, places the additional soil sealing of 3,500 square meters calculated by the State Chancellery to the left and right of the current street, resulting in an additional width of four meters. “This is not shown anywhere in the documents provided.”
In his letter, the Mayor reacts with equal incomprehension to another passage in the letter from the State Chancellery. The Free State has “supported the city of Munich constructively for years, both in planning and in the search for possible alternatives,” Reiter quotes. The mayor counters that the Stadtwerke München (SWM), as the project sponsor, has been trying to discuss its detailed plans with the Free State for about a year. “The list of attempts is long and well documented, but unfortunately no support of any kind, let alone constructive, was achieved on your part.”
The commitment for construction from 2017 has now been officially withdrawn
In its letter dated March 12, 2024, the Free State stated that the city had unilaterally terminated the cooperation with its route decision in December 2023. State Chancellor Herrmann justified the ban on the construction of the new tram line with the corresponding Council of Ministers resolution from 2017. At that time, the state of Bavaria reserved the right to re-examine the project given the existing plans. This has now happened.
This means that the commitment for the construction from 2017 has been officially withdrawn. The then Prime Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU), as the owner’s representative of the English Garden, promised at a meeting in the park that the city would be allowed to build a tram crossing. Munich then started planning a new route that would run from Elisabethplatz via Franz-Joseph-Straße, Martius- and Thiemestrasse to Tivolistraße. This would have allowed the tram to connect Neuhausen and Bogenhausen on a northern tangent in the future. Construction should have started at the end of 2025.