After three years, the infrastructure dialogue, in which various associations were supposed to submit their ideas for traffic planning, has made little progress, according to critics. According to Peter Westenberger, CEO of the “Die Güterbahnen”association, speaking to the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland”, the infrastructure dialogue commissioned by the coalition has not delivered new impulses and more consensus for a climate-friendly traffic plan.
“The infrastructure dialogue, designed as a dialogue of associations, ends, unlike what the coalition parties and many others in the country wished, not in an ‘infrastructure consensus'”, Westenberger said. Instead, the parties remain in different positions on whether and to what extent new roads should be built or whether more tracks should be built instead.
The relationship between maintenance and expansion for the different modes of transportation is also still unclear. “Long-known questions, especially how the financial burden of the long strongly expanded existing infrastructure of the traffic infrastructure can be covered alongside new construction wishes, or how the climate, energy and nature protection goals can be fulfilled if more and more traffic area is created, remain unsolved at the end of the process”Westenberger added.
More than 70 associations and initiatives from the environment, traffic and economy took part, invited by the Federal Ministry of Transport. The final report is scheduled to be officially presented on Monday.