Annoying traffic jams at the border: Dobrindt at the focal point

Created: 04/08/2022, 1:00 p.m

By: Christof Schnürer

Celebrities from Berlin: CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt (right) was happy to follow the call of his party friends (from left) Benedikt Zunterer, Matthias Haller, Peter Wimmer and Gerhard Schöner.

At the gas station at the state border, they discuss the recurring backwater problem.

© csu Facebook

Mittenwald – A few years ago, the locals would have thought this problem unthinkable: A kilometer-long line of cars that backed up on the federal highway 2 from the state border in part to the south distributor in Mittenwald.

"It happens more and more often out there, we have to find a solution for that," explains Matthias Haller, the deputy local chairman of the CSU.

Mittenwald

- A major reason for this new type of traffic phenomenon is the last German gas station at Porta Claudia.

If, especially at peak times, too many drivers want to use the gas pumps at the same time, fill up their travel provisions or buy a motorway vignette for Austria, space at the station under the Brunnstein quickly becomes tight.

But instead of travelers simply continuing on to the Seefeld Plateau and looking for a gas station there, they push into the area of ​​the station with the yellow shell - and if that's not enough, they just stay on the B 2.

Cars are already queuing up. And no one standing in the southbound line anywhere in the Ried really knows why.

"The flow of traffic to neighboring Tyrol must be ensured," the CSU Mittenwald announced in a Facebook post.

But the Christian Socialists do not want to stop at talking.

Without further ado, they radioed their party friend and constituency member of the German Bundestag, Alexander Dobrindt.

The head of the CSU state group – after all, Federal Minister of Transport between 2013 and 2017 – did not have to be asked twice.

Haller has in common

The influential federal politician from Peißenberg and Nadine Heiss from the responsible state building authority in Weilheim got an idea of ​​the situation with the CSU local chairman Peter Wimmer and the two market councillors, Benedikt Zunterer and Gerhard Schöner.

"We discussed various solutions with him," reveals Haller.

However, there is no one that makes everyone happy.

This illusion takes away a building authority expert Werner Hüntelmann immediately.

"You can't solve the problem on the street," he explains, referring to the bottleneck character right in front of the Tyrolean border town of Scharnitz.

On the one hand there are mountains and railway tracks and vis à vis houses and the Isar.

A turning lane to the gas station is therefore out of the question.

Hüntelmann's suggestion: "Take away the signs." For example, the reference to the last gas station before the state border.

This may be clever in terms of advertising, but it could possibly lead to a turning reflex.

Hubert Hohenleitner, head of the plagued Mittenwald police department, sees it the same way.

"A difficult problem." Because on the one hand you want to prevent unnecessary traffic jams, on the other hand you don't want to deprive a gas station operator of the basis of his business.

So it will become an uncomfortable regularity for his colleagues to untie the stopper at Scharnitz, especially when the weather is nice, travel waves or bed changes.

"We could soon make a permanent post there," jokes Hohenleitner.

Who knows one thing for sure: "It used to be a problem there."

But how does he assess the fact that motorists who want to go to the petrol station simply stay on a federal highway and thus make the traffic jam possible in the first place?

"A gray area," says the chief of inspection.

"You would have to ask a judge."