The construction and expansion of motorways and federal roads threatens to become three times as expensive as originally calculated by the Ministry of Transport. A new Greenpeace analysis shows that the construction of around 800 road projects, which are given top priority in the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan (BVWP), would cost a total of 153 billion euros by 2035 instead of the originally calculated 50.9 billion.
This is based on the Federal Government’s responses to the development of costs for 351 construction projects. The information comes from a small request from the left faction. “The Ministry of Transport is systematically paying off its climate-damaging road construction plans,” says Lena Donat, Greenpeace traffic expert and co-author of the report. “If you do the math correctly, you can see that the planned roads will actually cost a good 100 billion euros more. In order for Transport Minister Wissing to meet his climate targets and not hopelessly overrun his budget, he must stop the construction of further motorways and consistently switch to the railways.”
The ongoing dispute between the FDP and the Greens over the expansion of the motorway network is to be settled in a coalition committee this Sunday. The media report that the cost-benefit factor of a project should decide more about implementation in the future. Now the Greenpeace calculation shows that the costs of planned motorways are significantly higher than planned. Just last week, the Federal Environment Agency again underlined the climate lag of transport with data on CO₂ emissions in 2022.
“Volker Wissing has a CO₂ and a financial problem. Building even more freeways makes both things worse,” says Donat. “The answer can only be to fundamentally change the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan.” According to Greenpeace, the federal government’s response to the changed costs of 351 trunk road projects shows a clear trend: the calculated costs fell for 13 projects, while they remained constant for 13 others – the other 325 All projects have become more expensive, in some cases by several hundred percent.
On average, the costs of a construction project from the FTIP increase by 10.6 percent per year. After ten years, a project is accordingly twice as expensive. As early as 2016, the Federal Court of Auditors criticized incomprehensible calculations and underestimates.
