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Greenpeace/T&E Study: Two-thirds of Highway and Federal Road Projects Economically Unfeasible

Calculations from Greenpeace and T&E show: Updated costs considerably worsen the benefit calculations and should not be built. Examples are the A20 coastal highway or the A8 expansion near Munich.

Questionable cost-efficiency: Large highway projects are uneconomical, concludes a study by Greenpeace and T&E. | Photo: J. Reichel
Questionable cost-efficiency: Large highway projects are uneconomical, concludes a study by Greenpeace and T&E. | Photo: J. Reichel
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Increased construction costs, an updated price for CO2 damages, and the consequences of additional traffic make 64 percent of the highways and federal roads planned by the government economically unviable. This is shown by the latest published calculations from Transport & Environment (T&E) and Greenpeace. For this, the costs for all 1,045 evaluated road projects from the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan, valid until 2030, were recalculated (study and data visualization). The result: For 665 of the 1,045 projects, the currently expected costs exceed their societal benefits, making them economically unviable and they should not be implemented.

“Savings are being demanded everywhere, climate protection in transport is not progressing, yet the Transport Minister wants to build other economically unviable highways with billions in funds – this is incomprehensible,” says Lena Donat, Greenpeace mobility expert. “The tarmac dreams of the Transport Minister need to be stopped. All planned roads must be reviewed and uneconomical ones consistently weeded out.”

In light of significantly increased costs for materials and personnel, the budget committee already called on the Ministry of Transport (BMDV) in spring 2023 to update its nearly ten-year-old benefit-cost analyses. This was triggered by a report from the Federal Court of Auditors. So far, the BMDV has only presented adjusted construction and planning costs. Even with these adjustments, 115 (11 percent) of the 1,045 projects become economically unviable. When the current CO2 damage price from the Federal Environment Agency is also factored in, 241 (23 percent) of all road projects become uneconomical. The number of economically unviable projects rises to 665 (64 percent) when the follow-up costs of the increased traffic from new and expanded roads are included.

“If even the latest figures from the Ministry of Transport no longer justify the construction of additional highways, then the building must stop,” says Benedikt Heyl of Transport & Environment. “The German highway network is complete.”

Coastal Motorway A20 or A8 Expansion Near Munich: Costs Exceed Benefits

Apart from outdated data, the cost-benefit analysis of the Ministry of Transport also suffers from methodological weaknesses. Environmental impacts from the construction of new roads are given too little or no consideration, and the assumed gain in travel time is systematically overestimated. Although the analysis by Greenpeace and T&E does not consider these deficiencies, the updated construction costs, CO2 rates, and the expected increase in traffic already highlight controversial major projects as a societal loss-making business.

Three prominent examples of billion-dollar unprofitable motorway projects are the continuation of the A20 through moorland and nature reserves, the planned A39 between Lüneburg and Wolfsburg, and the eight-lane expansion of the A8 near Munich. The Federal Ministry of Transport is obliged to review the infrastructure plans every five years. Although this last happened in 2016, the ministry keeps delaying the publication of this so-called demand plan review. The BMDV also intends to review only the demand plan as a whole, but not to re-evaluate individual projects, despite explicit calls for this by the Federal Audit Office.

Translated automatically from German.
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