Gladbeck.
The mayor’s letter to Prime Minister Wüst is a sign for the citizens’ forum of how unlikely the construction of the A52 with a tunnel is.
The citizens’ forum sees the mayor’s letter, in which she asks Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst to speed up the expansion of the A52, as a sign that the city is “swimming its skin. Because it is becoming increasingly clear how improbable the construction of the A52 with a tunnel is.”
The citizens’ forum refers to Berlin, where the coalition is fiercely arguing about the traffic turnaround. Although there is a cabinet decision to accelerate planning for the A52 construction, at the same time it is also for the renovation of hundreds of dilapidated bridges and the renovation of the rails. The citizens’ forum concludes from this. “In view of these conflicting interests in the governing coalition, it is not foreseeable what the law ultimately to be passed by the Bundestag will look like, especially since the Green NRW Minister of Transport, Oliver Krischer, will also have an important say on the A52.”
Citizens’ forum speaks of an enormous time delay in planning
Especially since the delay in motorway construction is already dramatic, says the Citizens’ Forum. “The ongoing planning approval process for the huge motorway junction in Wittringen hasn’t progressed for eight years, and the process for the planning section in Bottrop to the south hasn’t progressed for almost 15 years.” The process for the tunnel hasn’t even started.
In addition, there is resistance at regional level – including from the Greens and the Left, and also a “cost explosion”, according to the Citizens’ Forum – and calculates that the approx. 9-kilometer-long new construction of the A52 from Essen-Nord to Gelsenkirchen-Buer would be one of the most expensive motorway projects count in Germany. Due to the planned cross (real costs of approx. 380 million euros, measured against comparable projects in NRW) and the tunnel (approx. 400 million euros costs for comparable projects in Germany), the total costs are already increasing towards the billion mark. According to the current status, every single kilometer would cost almost 90 million euros, and the trend is rising.
Construction of the motorway in Gladbeck uneconomical from the point of view of the citizens’ forum
The citizens’ forum therefore assumes that the construction is uneconomical and that there will also be considerations in Berlin as to whether the construction of the motorway between Essen and Gelsenkirchen should be pursued further.
All of this, according to the conclusion of the citizens’ forum, is also clear to the top management. “That’s why the fire letter was sent! If the statements made by our administration over the years about speedy planning and imminent tunnel construction of the A52 had been serious and reliable, there would have been no reason to ask the Prime Minister to build the A52 soon.”
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