IThings really got down to business this week in the Bavarian state parliament. The opposition gloated over the latest reports that the construction of the second main S-Bahn line for Munich would cost much more and take much longer than planned. SPD parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn drew a direct comparison to the scandalous airport BER, which the CSU in particular liked to use as proof that they simply couldn’t do it in Berlin.
“Even Berlin Airport pales in comparison to the disaster with the second main route,” said von Brunn, who is never at a loss for a snappy remark. The costs there have tripled compared to the first estimates, and for the second trunk route they have increased more than tenfold from the initial 700 million euros to possibly more than seven billion euros.
Although that is not entirely correct as far as BER is concerned, it shows that the problem of the main route, which is after all one of the largest infrastructure projects in Germany, is in danger of growing – a symbol of the fact that the CSU-led state government is no better than the others.
Introductory meeting or trap?
The freshly minted Bavarian Transport Minister Christian Bernreiter from the CSU had little more to counter such accusations in the state parliament than accusing the opposition of “scandalizing” and finally demanding reliable figures from Deutsche Bahn, which is implementing the project. His hint that the Federal Minister of Transport had accepted the co-financing commitments of 60 percent in a personal conversation also fell flat.
On Wednesday, Bernreiter traveled to Berlin to see FDP man Volker Wissing. The mood can be imagined as tense. Because a few days earlier there had been a skirmish between the Federal Minister of Transport and the Bavarian State Government. What is undisputed: there should be a meeting between the Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU boss Markus Söder and Wissing in Munich.
The course of the previous main line and the planned second main line
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Image: FAZ
But while the Federal Minister of Transport apparently assumed that this was an introductory talk with a focus on federal politics, those responsible in Bavaria wanted it to be understood from the start as a kind of crisis talk about the problems with the second S-Bahn trunk line. Therefore, according to the state government, the city of Munich was asked to do so.
Shortly before the meeting, the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported on an expected explosion in costs. One could read that as if the information had been leaked by the state government – which is vehemently denied there. In any case, Wissing is said to have believed in a trap and canceled the appointment at short notice. However, he held a dinner speech at the Munich Hypovereinsbank – which in turn has been considered with outrage by the CSU since then. Her new Secretary General Martin Huber scoffed in the state parliament on Thursday that Wissing had let the conversation fall apart and “rather went to a big bank to have a bite to eat”.
“Responsibility lies exclusively with the Free State of Bavaria”
It is clear that both Wissing and Söder want to be associated as little as possible with the billion-euro project. Wissing says this quite bluntly, but it is also guaranteed to a certain extent at Söder: The “Augsburger Allgemeine” reported that a fire letter from the Ministry of Construction had already gone to the State Chancellery in December 2020, in which ministry officials listed a whole range of risks and made it clear that that there is an urgent need for action. But nothing happened.
