Climate Crisis & Land Consumption? Bavaria is Going Bigger with Concrete - and Has (No) Plan
They’ve done it again: Hardly a week goes by in the peculiar federal state called Bavaria without a local politician—or in this case, even a female politician in the form of Bavarian transport minister Kerstin Schreyer—being photographed with a spade for a groundbreaking or cutting a ribbon. Recently, it was the eight-lane expansion of the A99, and now it is the so-called Eastern Airport Tangent (FTO), whose three-lane expansion was ceremoniously celebrated. In the remarkably short time of just one year, the "relief project" was realized, enthused the CSU minister.
“I am very pleased that we stayed on schedule and within budget in this important expansion section and are now close to opening it to traffic after just a little over a year. Since its completion just over ten years ago, the airport tangent has developed into a highly important connection between the A 92 and A 94 motorways and the airport. Its expansion represents a real improvement for all road users, especially more traffic safety,” the minister was quoted as saying.
The cheerful press release goes on to say: "The airport tangent runs for a total length of 30 kilometers without passing through any towns, between the Erding junction on the A 92 and Markt Schwaben on the A 94. According to a recent traffic report, the currently two-lane road is projected to carry around 36,000 vehicles per day by 2035, making an expansion urgently necessary, not least for reasons of traffic safety. As the first expansion section, the road between Erding-Mitte and Erding-Süd was widened from 8 to 12 meters over a length of 2 kilometers, thereby adding a third lane to ensure safe overtaking in this area."
Yippee, we're going four-lane!
And the Erding district administrator Martin Bayerstorfer (CSU) exulted that this was only the beginning, with a four-lane expansion firmly in sight. The planning approval process is currently underway for the next construction section between the airport and Erding-North junction...
Such "jubilation reports" and their disturbing "sound" seem anachronistic, deeply rooted in a 1980s mobility mindset that was already wrong even back then, when it would have been possible to easily begin a change of course.
While the climate crisis is taking on increasingly dramatic forms—flooding in the Rhineland, a hurricane in the Mediterranean (the term Medicane has even been coined), water shortages in Franconia—while the COP26 climate conference is beginning in Glasgow, which really wants to, no, must get serious about climate protection, while potential traffic light coalition partners in Berlin wrestle with a traffic shift away from the automobile, Bavaria acts as if: "Not our climate change".
Nothing but (asphalt) milling
The black-orange cabinet consisting of CSU with chief promoter Markus Söder and Free Voters with chief concreter Hubert Aiwanger has not gone beyond announcements when it comes to a traffic shift, which would also mean a construction shift. The dominant party, which always prides itself on the beauty of its unique cultural landscapes, continues to pave over said landscapes daily on 11.6 hectares of land—more than ever before—and despite all pledges of a—albeit voluntary—restriction to five hectares.
German masters of concreting
For those interested in this tragedy, a visit to the Munich suburb of Parsdorf is recommended as an example, where BMW is currently building a kilometer-long area for logistics as well as a battery cell manufacturing plant, and next door, Poing-North has prepared the next development area for further urban sprawl. What happens in Bavaria is as if they were concreting over a medium-sized town like Forchheim in Franconia every year, a nationwide infamous record.
Minister-President Söder boasts, and fortunately only the interim Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) boasts, no minister has ever channeled more financial resources for road construction to Bavaria than the politician from Passau ("you brought a lot of money to Bavaria"). In fact, an unusually high number of road construction projects have been realized in Bavaria, with 2.1 billion euros being invested in federal highways in Bavaria, while the much more densely populated North Rhine-Westphalia had to make do with 1.7 billion euros.
Forecasts of today, we can't afford tomorrow
It seems as if shots fired between the Main, Danube, and Isar went unheard. Political impulses for a traffic shift and other mobility barely exist in the land of "laptop & lederhosen," nor a mobility vision for Bavaria. No surprise: The Bavarian comprehensive transport plan, which exists, dates from 2002. Minister Schreyer recently refused an update, justifying this to the FDP opposition in the state parliament with "great dynamics" such as digitization, automated driving, electromobility, climate protection, air quality control, or 365-euro ticket plans. They are therefore checking whether "short and clear formats might be better suited." And disguises this with ministerial self-disclosure:
"I think traffic policy from the people. They are interested in concrete solutions, not abstract plans," Schreyer stated.
Translated from Bavarian to German: One is driving on sight and has no plan. Too little for a federal state that appears not just "wide-lane" but above all, "wide-legged" with global leadership aspirations. The FDP agrees: "The Bavarian state government is navigating completely directionless through the traffic shift and has no vision of overall mobility for tomorrow," says the transport policy spokesman Sebastian Körber. He is right!
Considering Schreyer's statements, one spontaneously thinks of Gerhard Polt: "I don't need a counter-argument, I'm already against it myself," he once let a Bavarian grumbler rant on stage, who despite all the developments and Bavarian apocalypse concludes at the end, "a revolution is needed here!" And thereby infers: "That's why I'm voting CSU again this time."
There is also no EnBW like in the neighboring "The Länd" Baden-Württemberg, which vehemently drives the electric transformation, public transit is almost left to starve, the Munich subway expansion stagnates at its 50th anniversary due to financing. The federal-Bavaria tragedy regarding the Brenner North access, to the ridicule and constant annoyance of the Tyrolean neighbors who regularly pull the emergency brake called block handling due to the traffic avalanche on the road, should be recalled for completeness. Then it clogs nearly from Kiefersfelden to the State Chancellery.
The Erding FTO example clearly shows a doubly flawed worldview: Not only does one maintain past road traffic forecasts, which one can no longer afford if one still wants to manage the climate crisis halfway adequately. One also promotes air traffic by making people feel that driving is still completely okay and everything is fine and by offering an easier option to comfortably reach the airport.
By the way, the second-largest parking garage in Germany is located there (Münchner Merkur: "money-making machine"), and also a Hofbräuhaus (branch), but still no long-distance train station. Instead, if you're lucky, there's a suburban train that stops at every farm (sorry, Halbergmoos & Johanneskirchen) —or because there's again a switch malfunction at Neufahrn. But concrete facts are also simply created, thereby attracting even more drivers to the road. As former Munich mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel or ex-auto manager Daniel Goeudevert already knew: he who builds roads reaps traffic.
Tangents are everywhere in Bavaria
Which brings us to the brave opponents of the Eastern Tangent Augsburg (yes, tangents are everywhere in Bavaria). They cite a scientific study from the USA, where professors Duranton and Turner found, based on comprehensive traffic data, that the number of kilometers traveled is proportional to the number of highway kilometers present. The more roads that are built, the more traffic increases. They identified three reasons for this: the increase in trips by existing users, the increase in traffic-dependent production activities, and an increase in incoming traffic from outside. They concluded that building additional roads does not prevent traffic jams and called this "the fundamental law of congestion."
In Bavaria, this message has certainly not arrived yet. The "fundamental construction law" applies here. One might also say: that affects nobody here.
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