The planned expansion and new construction of federal trunk roads in Germany is likely to be far more expensive than previously assumed, and the transport budget may be missing 100 billion euros. The environmental protection organization Greenpeace has calculated on the basis of updated cost estimates by the federal government that these projects would become more expensive by an average of 10.6 percent each year. Greenpeace speaks of a “billion grave” and calls on Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) to stop the construction of new motorways.
For its analysis, which is available to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, the organization considered the new construction and expansion projects for motorways and federal roads that are in the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan (BVWP). When this was passed in 2016, all of the almost 1,400 highway projects had a cost estimate. According to the federal government, there are now more up-to-date calculations for 351 of them: Greenpeace has calculated and weighted them all and comes up with an average of a good ten percent per year.
Government plans with 50 billion euros
If you apply this increase to all the road projects of the FTIP that are classified as urgent, then a total of 150 billion euros would not be necessary, as estimated in the plan, but 150 billion euros, Greenpeace calculates. And that would mean: ten instead of the current 2.5 billion euros per year would be needed in Wissing’s budget in order to implement all projects as planned by the year 2035.
The reason for this is not just rising construction costs; Projects can also become more expensive due to new environmental and noise protection regulations or rescheduling. Greenpeace also accuses the federal and state governments of deliberately keeping the originally estimated costs of the projects low in order to increase the chance of implementation.
