It was a big appearance by the CSU celebrities and a classic too: groundbreaking for a new road project, 170 million euros in construction costs, relief for the troubled region. Anyone who delivers such good news does not avoid a camera. Last Thursday, nine officials and politicians had themselves photographed with the spade on the specially made pile of sand in Oberau. Above all, Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer, as well as his predecessor, the CSU constituency member Alexander Dobrindt.
The Loisach Valley near Garmisch-Partenkirchen has turned into what is probably the largest tunnel construction site in Germany. This time it was about the Auerberg tunnel, a four-lane tube between Eschenlohe and Oberau, 1.9 kilometers in length, planned inauguration in 2028. When everything is ready, a whole system of bypasses should guide car traffic around the Olympic community – a total of five tunnels with total costs of one billion euros. “Traffic turnaround has nothing to do with maximum traffic jams,” said Scheuer loudly Munich Mercury on the occasion, a sentence that already resonates that, in view of the climate debates, such a large investment in road construction does not meet with enthusiasm everywhere. Especially since Prime Minister Markus Söder has recently propagated the expansion of the railways.
The view from the south portal of the 3.6 kilometer long Kramer tunnel, which is supposed to relieve Garmisch of the traffic in the direction of the Fernpass.
(Photo: Sophie Linckersdorff)
Sigrid Meierhofer, the former SPD mayor of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, has doubts about such announcements. She is not fundamentally against tunnels, she supports the bypassing through the Wank, but she considers the project through the Auerberg to be wrong. That is absurd, because it only attracts more traffic and just shifts the traffic jam. The tunnel will not bring any improvements, on the contrary, it will collapse, and it will also counteract any efforts to improve climate protection.
But what about the train? While the state is investing a billion euros in car tunnels and planning bypasses for Murnau and Weilheim, the trains between Tutzing and Garmisch-Partenkirchen are mostly single-lane routes. The expansion has been discussed again and again for a number of years. When Munich applied for the 2018 Winter Games, the Free State tried to lure the skeptical Garmisch-Partenkirchner with the rail expansion: The trains from Garmisch to Munich should run in less than an hour. But nothing came of the Winter Games or the expansion plans. Dobrindt, Scheuer’s predecessor as Minister of Transport, announced in 2017 that an expansion of the route was not necessary.
The train still sneaks to Munich in 1:21 hours, at least in theory. Because commuters like Sigrid Meierhofer know the notorious stop in Huglfing when it says: “We’re still waiting for the return train.” The Werdenfelsbahn is susceptible to all kinds of disruptions – snowfall, storms or slow S-Bahn trains keep the timetable out of sync, Norbert Moy knows that too. The Upper Bavarian district chairman of the Pro Bahn association lives in Weilheim and commutes by train from Garmisch to Munich.
“In terms of traffic planning, it is obvious that we have a shortage here,” says Moy. Although electronic interlockings and new platforms have been built in recent years, the main problem of the line has still not been resolved: Between Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Tutzing, the trains run on a single track except for a few short sections. Not only is capacity at its limit, delays also build up when trains in the station have to wait for oncoming traffic. Behind Eschenlohe, the train curves around a mountain at a snail’s pace, while the Auerberg tunnel will soon be blasted into the rock just a few hundred meters further, so that it can go faster – at least for drivers. Moy proposes to double-track at least part of the route so that fast express connections are possible – a wish that will hardly come true. Because the Free State of Bavaria has waived the registration of the Werdenfelsbahn for the traffic route plan 2030. Everything will stay the way it is.
Meanwhile, the transit and excursion traffic through the Loisach Valley is increasing. Hardly a weekend goes by without the message: “Traffic jam at the end of the autobahn at Eschenlohe and on to Oberau”. When the caravan moves back to Munich in the evening, if the weather is nice, traffic will stall for almost the entire route – 90 kilometers.
“It’s unbearable,” says Garmisch-Partenkirchen mayor Elfriede Koch (CSU), “we have to get the traffic out of the way, as quickly as possible.” And for this you also need the Auerberg tunnel as a link in the chain of bypasses. Only after their completion can the traffic calming in town be properly addressed. She doesn’t expect too much from the railway: “There’s an epidemic on it,” says the mayor, recalling the endless debates on expansion. The Deutsche Bahn had sold land that would have been needed for the expansion – that is the only thing the company has managed so far. But in her opinion, expanding the railways would be “not a panacea”, traffic turnaround or not: “Even an electric car needs road space.”
This is now being created in the Loisachtal – also in Bad Tölz, about 60 kilometers away. There, too, Transport Minister Scheuer acted on Thursday as a groundbreaker for the 2.7 kilometer long and 48 million euro bypass north through the sensitive landscape. His speech was similar to that of Oberau (“We would only have to stand at the intersection on Flinthöhe for half an hour …”), including the addition: “We have never invested as much in the railways as we do now.” In parts of Bad Tölz, too, people are suffering from car traffic – and are waiting for the electrification of the Oberlandbahn, which runs on diesel multiple units. Sometime after 2030 it should finally be ready. The vague idea for a light rail between Tölz and Penzberg, which could relieve the traffic on the federal highway 472, remained a vague idea.
When exactly the construction work for the Auerberg tunnel in the Loisachtal will start is still unclear – despite the groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday. It could drag on until the end of 2023, it is said, because of the much preparatory work. Until then, Dobrindt and Scheuer did not want to wait, after all, the general election is on September 26th.