For years, a small association has been fighting to get a disused railway line back into operation.
A CSU State Secretary publicly makes fun of the "dreamers".
An expert opinion clearly contradicts him.
A traffic expert complains about serious deficiencies in a passenger potential analysis that the Bavarian Ministry of Transport had submitted for the lower Steigerwaldbahn.
The recently presented values for the closed Schweinfurt-Kitzingen line are far too low.
The study draws a "rather negative attitude" towards reactivation, says the geographer Konrad Schliephake, who works with the "Steigerwald Express" association.
The history: For years the Förderverein has been fighting for the restart of the lower Steigerwaldbahn, which once connected Schweinfurt with Kitzingen, but has been gradually discontinued in the past decades - first the Kitzingen-Gerolzhofen section, then Gerolzhofen-Schweinfurt, and finally the freight traffic at the end of 2001.
While the rails of the single-track, non-electrified line are rusting or have even partially been dismantled, the fight for reactivation is raging on a political level.
The chairman of the association, Andreas Witte, and his colleagues collected more than 2,600 signatures in 2019 and achieved that politicians seriously deal with the Steigerwaldbahn.
The Steigerwaldbahn is not an isolated case - initiatives have sprung up all over Bavaria in recent years to repair and operate old railway lines.
A current example in Upper Bavaria: the Fuchstalbahn between Landsberg and Schongau, on which trains from the paper mill now only run occasionally.
Recently, Bavaria's Transport Minister Kerstin Schreyer (CSU) even found it difficult to explain because she did not want to extend the trial operation of the forest railway (Gotterszell-Viechtach) in the Bavarian Forest.
Regional policy and the CSU protested vigorously - Schreyer finally gave in.
A CSU state secretary fights against the Steigerwaldbahn
Things are different with the Steigerwaldbahn: In particular the local CSU member of the state parliament (and interior state secretary) Gerhard Eck is a stubborn opponent of reactivation.
On his homepage, he etched against the advocates of the rail link, who attracted attention “through dreams, half-truths, backward-looking nostalgia and ideological delusion” and who would prefer to have a train stop “at every milk can”.
Eck will probably have liked the fact that the Bavarian Railway Company - a department of the Bavarian Ministry of Transport - presented an expert opinion on the passenger potential at the beginning of March, stating that the preliminary knockout blow for all "dreamers" (Eck) means: the BEG came in conclusion that the potential demand on the railway line is only 563 passenger kilometers.
"This clearly falls short of the relevant threshold value of 1,000 passenger kilometers per kilometer of route length." This assumed a daily hourly service between Schweinfurt main station and the suburb of Kitzingen-Etwashausen - the railway line has ended there since the Wehrmacht blew up the Main Bridge shortly before the end of the Second World War .
According to the association's estimate, the construction of a new bridge would cost a considerable amount of millions, depending on the variant.
But it's worth it.
The appraiser attacks the BEG
The Würzburg geographer Konrad Schliephake, who was consulted by the Friends' Association, analyzed the BEG report.
In 2019, he presented figures that predicted 1700 passengers for Schweinfurt-Gerolzhofen - much more than the BEG now.
On the one hand, the so-called 1000 criterion has always been controversial.
On the other hand: The new low numbers astonished him, writes Schliephake.
He accuses the BEG of incomplete calculations in an as yet unpublished statement that our editors have received.
Above all, she used commuter data from the Federal Employment Agency when calculating the passenger potential.
“Potentials from training and leisure trips are mentioned, but the type and extent of their inclusion in the demand model of the BEG remains unclear.” There is also no precise information on daily mobility. “The tourism analysis is also unproductive”.
The BEG used official statistics that only cover hotels with more than nine beds.
There are also no statements about the “travel motives for shopping / procurement” (at offices).
For Witte it is clear: “There is a considerable need for improvement in the study” - also because the study was only calculated up to Kitzingen-Etwashausen.
"You lose all commuters to Würzburg and Nuremberg," says Witte.
Schliephake now demands that the BEG discloses its internal parameters and calculation methods.
Only then can the opportunities for the Steigerwaldbahn be discussed fairly.