Dispute over Planning Acceleration: Priority for Everything is Useless

A new dispute has erupted within the traffic light coalition on the controversial topic of transport, revolving around the proposed Planning Acceleration Act. Despite a three-hour meeting on Tuesday between the participating ministries of transport and environment with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, no resolution was reached. The law aims to speed up the realization of transport projects. The coalition agreement had stipulated prioritizing rail over road and maintenance over new construction. It reads verbatim:

"Investments in transport infrastructure must continue to increase and be secured in the long term. In doing so, we want to invest significantly more in rail than in road to prioritize the implementation of projects like the Deutschland-Takt. For federal highways, we want to place a stronger focus on maintenance and renovation, with a particular emphasis on engineering structures. For this, we will gradually increase the proportion of maintenance funds by 2025 amid a growing budget."

A separate rail acceleration commission was also discussed shortly thereafter. However, Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) now apparently wants nothing more to do with it. He believes that airports, waterways, and the expansion and new construction of highways should also be expedited "to meet the outstanding importance of a high-performance highway infrastructure for the common good," as stated in the draft of the Planning Acceleration Act, which was presented to Spiegel. Wissing lists no fewer than 46 road construction projects, including new constructions like the highly controversial extension of the A100 in Berlin or the expansion and further construction of the A20 in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein.

Wissing: With e-mobility, transport becomes environmentally friendly

He insists that electrifying cars will "decarbonize" transport, meaning that new highway constructions would no longer be in contrast to climate protection. According to him, the focus of planning acceleration is not on prioritizing certain modes of transport but simply on faster planning. The FDP executive committee promptly backed Wissing, declaring that they want to at least halve the planning and approval duration for all transport projects, according to FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai. "Only with an efficient network of roads, railways, waterways, and cycle paths can we swiftly bring investments to fruition and meet society's individual mobility needs," added the FDP General Secretary. He points to forecasts from the Federal Office for Goods Transport, which predicts further growth in road transport volume for 2024.

"Incomprehensible": Greens insist on coalition agreement and priorities

The Green coalition partner sees it completely differently, finding the FDP executive committee’s decision "incomprehensible" and insisting on sticking to the coalition agreement. Environment Minister Steffi Lemke wants to prioritize rail projects and "place a stronger emphasis on maintenance and renovation, with a particular focus on engineering structures." Lemke also fears that planning authorities would be finally overwhelmed if road construction were also prioritized. The argument goes, "Whoever speeds up everything, speeds up nothing at all." "It is absolutely undisputed that the repair and replacement of bridges must proceed more quickly. But that is something entirely different from new highway construction," Lemke told the Süddeutsche Zeitung regarding her ministerial colleagues. The coalition agreement states:

"For particularly prioritized projects, the federal government should provide short deadlines for issuing the planning approval decision according to the model of the Federal Immission Control Act. We aim to accelerate major and particularly significant infrastructure projects through permissible and EU law-compliant legal planning and implement them with high political priority. Such infrastructure projects include system-relevant rail lines, power transmission lines, and engineering structures (e.g., critical bridges)."

The coalition members even specified which projects to begin with: "We will start with rail projects from the Deutschland-Takt – the expansion/new construction of the railway lines Hamm-Hannover-Berlin, the Middle Rhine corridor, Hanau-Würzburg/Fulda-Erfurt, Munich-Kiefersfelden-border D/A, Karlsruhe-Basel, 'Optimized Alpha E+', East Corridor South, Nuremberg-Reichenbach/border D-CZ, as well as the nodes Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Mannheim, and Munich – as well as with high-voltage direct current transmission lines central to the energy transition such as SüdLink, SüdOstLink, and Ultranet."

Priority for transformation projects

In a cabinet decision from June, also cited by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, there is mention of a restriction on possible projects. The focus should be on projects that serve the transition to climate neutrality and additionally "investments in the maintenance or replacement new construction of rail, bridges, and roads." The transport policy spokesperson of the Green parliamentary group, Stefan Gelbhaar, emphasized that "climate and environmental protection standards have good reasons," and exemptions for climate-damaging infrastructure are "illogical." There was also opposition from the SPD to Wissing, although he apparently also has the support of Chancellor Olaf Scholz:

"We cannot treat all modes of transport equally in the long run if we ever want to achieve our climate goals. New highways should definitely not benefit from accelerated procedures," said SPD deputy parliamentary leader Detlef Müller in contrast.