Deutsche Bahn leaves no room for doubt: “Only the new line creates enough space on the rails between Hanover and Hamburg so that trains no longer pile up.” With an estimated cost of around nine billion euros, the approximately 109 kilometer long project in northern Germany would be one of the largest construction projects on German rails in the next few decades. It is intended to relieve the existing, significantly longer track connection via Uelzen, Celle and Lüneburg - especially since this is one of the busiest routes given the connection to the German seaports.
On site, however, planning is a hot topic. There are doubts about whether it can be implemented quickly and there has been debate for years. Now, however, things could move faster than previously expected. Transport politicians from the black-red coalition in the Bundestag have spoken out in favor of a new building in a draft resolution instead of an expansion that was also being discussed. Next week, the Bundestag could clear the way for the planning to continue. The Transport Committee will deal with it on Wednesday, and then the entire plenary session on Thursday.
Proponents praise the project highly. The new line will relieve pressure on the existing route - more local trains could run there, twice as many as today. The new line itself, on which a speed of 250 km/h should be possible, in turn helps to “implement the German rhythm, which coordinates all long-distance trains across Germany like clockwork”.
Will rural areas be left behind?
In contrast, the SPD-led state government in Lower Saxony expressed its displeasure with the preliminary decision in Berlin on Wednesday. The spokesman for Prime Minister Olaf Lies announced that they had vehemently supported the rejection of the new route in the past and would continue to do so. The new route is designed to speed up long-distance traffic, but disadvantages commuters in the region. The rural area between Hanover and Lüneburg is in danger of being “left behind”. For this reason and because of the expected resistance along the new route, Prime Minister Lies has been in favor of expanding the existing route for years.
This so-called “optimized Alpha-E” solution was the result of a complex participation process in 2015 that was intended to pacify the decades-long dispute over train traffic between Hamburg and Hanover. As the economics minister at the time, Lies was personally heavily involved in the dialogue forum, while Deutsche Bahn never concealed its skepticism about its outcome and continued to push forward with plans for a new route. The state government fears that a new building will jeopardize the planned upgrade of the existing route via Lüneburg. There was a threat of “25 years of standstill,” said the government spokesman.
The state government is gossiping about Deutsche Bahn
The Ministry of Economics in Hanover also questioned Deutsche Bahn's ability to carry out the billion-dollar project. The company can't even get its "bread and butter business" together, but now wants to present "haute cuisine," criticized a spokesman for Economics Minister Grant Hendrik Tonne. Lower Saxony's concerns were “overheard and ignored”. The federal government and the railways are now obliged to explain their decision in the affected regions. The state could do little about the preliminary decision for the new construction route, but would later bring its interests forward in the spatial planning process and in the planning approval.
However, the red-green state government is not united in its opposition to the new line. The coalition agreement between the SPD and the Greens contains a specification for the “optimized Alpha-E” variant. But large parts of the Greens favor a new line to strengthen rail over cars. The Green Party state chairwoman Greta Garlichs therefore praised the agreement in Berlin, which ended a long “back and forth between the SPD and CDU”. The SPD parliamentary group, however, warned of a “North German Stuttgart 21”. The Lower Saxony CDU state chairman Sebastian Lechner also opposed a new building on Wednesday and, like the Lower Saxony SPD, continues to support the “Alpha E” variant.
The new route also runs through the constituency of Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil. The SPD federal chairman was therefore one of the staunch opponents of the project in Berlin, but was obviously no longer able to assert himself.
