CSU is to torpedo its own city council decision: Stadtbahn is on the brink – "an indictment"

Created: 01/26/2022, 15:41

Regensburg wants a tram (like here in Bordeaux).

So far, this has been a broad consensus in the city council.

© Goran Waldt

The "Alliance for high-quality public transport in Regensburg" accuses the CSU of deliberately torpedoing the Stadtbahn project and calls on the city council to take action.

Regensburg - With only one dissenting vote, the Regensburg city council decided in 2018 to build a rail-bound light rail system in the district capital of the Upper Palatinate.

Feasibility studies were launched and a separate office created.

In the coalition agreement between the SPD, CSU, FDP, Freie Wahlern and CSB, the Stadtbahn is the central transport project.

A project that is expected to receive around 90 percent federal and state funding (more on that).

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Stadtbahn in Regensburg: The house blessing in the coalition is crooked

But in the coalition, the house blessing has been hanging crooked for some time because of the project.

In October, the CSU* rushed forward and demanded a decision by the council on the Stadtbahn - the citizens should decide on its implementation (read more about it).

Since then, the party has regularly invited to site visits.

Not to prevent the project, assures CSU boss Michael Lehner, but: "We should perceive the critical voices early enough and respond to them."

However, not only parts of the coalition and the Greens in the Regensburg* city council doubt that it is all about that, but also increasingly other proponents of the Stadtbahn.

One of them is Professor Walter Weber.

He is the coordinator of the "Alliance for high-quality public transport in Regensburg and the surrounding area", an association of around 30 associations and initiatives.

CSU and Stadtbahn: On-site appointments to create a mood against the project?

After he and some of his comrades-in-arms took part in a site visit organized by the CSU in early December, their impression is completely different.

The CSU seems to have been "less concerned with the exchange of ideas and information on the respective situation" and more with fundamentally questioning the Stadtbahn.

Weber writes this in an email to Mayor Gertrud Maltz-Schwarzfischer (SPD), which he sent via a larger mailing list.

Contrary to the announcement by the CSU, which had invited to the site visit at Unterer Wöhrd, it was not about the specific situation on site.

Rather, CSU boss Lehner "extended in detail that there are light rail projects in many German cities that the citizens are opposed to." would".

Lehner dismissed the reference to the expected funding of the project with up to 90 percent with the argument that "everything is tax money, regardless of whether it comes from the city or from somewhere else".

Criticism of the city council and administration: There is not enough information about the light rail system

Weber's summary of the event: "All in all, one had the impression that it was not about informing citizens and exchanging ideas about the Lower Wöhrd, but about preventing the Regensburg Stadtbahn in principle.

The council decision announced by him (Lehner,, editor’s note) should also serve this purpose.”

But Weber also criticizes the city council, city leaders and administration.

During the on-site appointment, he noticed that there were still major information deficits when it came to light rail.

"After the city council decision of 2018, why wasn't the euphoric mood pro-Stadtbahn not used to involve, inform and inspire the citizens?" he asks the mayor.

Although a separate office for the Stadtbahn has long been set up, including a press spokeswoman, there is hardly any external communication.

A flyer with the most important information "knows no citizen".

He appealed to Gertrud Maltz-Schwarzfischer: “Have the flyer printed 50,000 times and sent to all households in the city as a bulk mail.

Place large advertisements on the topic in the daily newspapers.

Organize public events (…).”

Request for advice on the Stadtbahn?

"This puts the city council in question."

Weber and the alliance he represents are passionate supporters of the Stadtbahn. A further expansion of the bus fleet is not possible simply due to a lack of traffic areas, what is needed is environmentally friendly, attractive and efficient public transport as well as the general funding of such a project by the federal and state governments are some of their arguments.

The alliance rejects a request for advice on the Stadtbahn.

"In the system of representative democracy, the elected officials have to make decisions for the benefit of the citizens and their city - to the best of their knowledge and belief, and on the basis of their mandate-related, detailed information." All previous decisions on the light rail were made almost unanimously.

A council request that actually serves to present the citizens with an alternative proposal to a referendum would turn all of this upside down.

According to previous decisions, responsibility would be returned to the citizens.

"The city council would thus question its task and importance as a decision-making body, even itself."

Failure of the Stadtbahn would be "a sign of poverty for the administration".

And Weber is quite clear: "Should Regensburg* pass up the opportunity to implement a modern light rail system in public transport, it would not only be an unforgivable failure on the part of the city politicians, but also an indictment of the administration."