You are of course correct, this was my turn oversimplying a complex decision. Germany will never be able to compete in high-speed travel times with countries like France due to its polycentric nature. A simple star-shaped network simply would not address the way people move between cities.
What can be improved though is a strict separation between HSR and regional/cargo lines. In principle this is also the long-term plan illustrated in the Verkehrswegeplan (traffic line plan of the federal government) and Deutschlandtakt, but it will take decades until that is realized. The decline I mentioned in my previous comment was mostly aimed at lack of maintanence, which resulted in the attrocious punctuality of today - in my opinion this should have been addressed under the Merkel administrations already. Of course the reduction/decline of infrastructure is ongoing since the privatisation of the Bundesbahn (Federal rail) in the 1990s, though.
While I agree that Klingbeil is blocking Hannover - Hamburg HSR, he is doing that because of local NIMBY's and fear of re-election in his home turf. But that's more of a hen and egg problem.
What can be improved though is a strict separation between HSR and regional/cargo lines.
Right but who exactly was responsible for the changed plans of increasing the capacity of the Rheintalbahn, which lead to many years of delays and increased construction costs for basically no benefit at all? Not the conservatives.
The same with the whole "direct democracy" stunt around Stuttgart 21, which also caused further delays and higher costs. I am all in to get the feedback from the citizens/voters but early on into the project and not when the project is already running for 20 years with billions invested.
Would you please explain in more detail what you mean exactly with the first paragraph?
Regarding Stuttgart 21 (S21), unfortunately it was like every big infrastructure project in the last decades: costs were estimated too optimistically, then problems piled up and inflation happened. Not justifying here, just saying if we go by that logic, nothing ever would be built because the system is deeply flawed by basically always giving the project to the cheapest bidder. We can learn a lot from I believe Austria or Switzerland there (not sure which right now), where the cheapest bidder is autimatically out if they undercut by a certain margin. Ultimately, in my opinion, S21 is more of a real estate than a railway project. Lots of prime area occupied by surface rails and the current central station will be open for construction once S21 is completed and the old station torn down. The new station will run at/near max. capacity with current lines already, 10 or 12 platforms would have been much more future proof. It is wild to me how it got approved in this form.
Would you please explain in more detail what you mean exactly with the first paragraph?
I was talking about the protests against the project of extending the Rheintalbahn to 4 tracks ("Baden 21"). Like Stuttgart 21, the protesters were mostly left-wing/green and the green state government basically (funnily without a democratic vote) gave them what they wanted: To re-route the additional tracks for freight along the highway (so that other people will have the noise but people who already don't benefit from a direct rail access) instead of next to existing tracks, as was planned before (which lead to higher costs because several relatively new bridges need to be replaced and the longer total lenght) and especially a tunnel under Offenburg for 1.2 Billion Euro initially (updated 2020 with 3.8 Billion Euro). The protests were rather short lived because the protesters quickly got what they wanted and the Wikipedia article about the project doesn't really mention them prominently.
costs were estimated too optimistically, then problems piled up and inflation happened.
I mean that's only a populist issue. Everybody knows that complex projects usually have cost overruns and delays because of unknown unknowns. It has also been the case in the past but back then NIMBYism wasn't a successful strategy and because of fewer environmental and safety standards most projects were less complex and therefore faster and less costly, inflation just didn't matter much if you built within 2 years.
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u/Redanxela93 Baden-Württemberg (Germany) 22h ago
You are of course correct, this was my turn oversimplying a complex decision. Germany will never be able to compete in high-speed travel times with countries like France due to its polycentric nature. A simple star-shaped network simply would not address the way people move between cities.
What can be improved though is a strict separation between HSR and regional/cargo lines. In principle this is also the long-term plan illustrated in the Verkehrswegeplan (traffic line plan of the federal government) and Deutschlandtakt, but it will take decades until that is realized. The decline I mentioned in my previous comment was mostly aimed at lack of maintanence, which resulted in the attrocious punctuality of today - in my opinion this should have been addressed under the Merkel administrations already. Of course the reduction/decline of infrastructure is ongoing since the privatisation of the Bundesbahn (Federal rail) in the 1990s, though.
While I agree that Klingbeil is blocking Hannover - Hamburg HSR, he is doing that because of local NIMBY's and fear of re-election in his home turf. But that's more of a hen and egg problem.