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Transport Minister Oliver Krischer (Greens), Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Transport, speaks at the conference of the NRW Ministry of Transport.
© Christoph Reichwein/dpa
When motorways are closed, diversions and alternative routes are often heavily used.
Many drivers look for hidden routes.
These streets will also need to be renovated at some point.
But who pays for that?
Düsseldorf - The motorway is closed due to bridge renovation, and traffic is backed up on the official diversion route: cars and trucks therefore often look for hidden routes through residential areas or towns in order to get to their destination more quickly.
North Rhine-Westphalia's Transport Minister Oliver Krischer (Greens) is now demanding money from the federal government to repair damage to such unofficial alternative routes.
Krischer announced on Friday at an infrastructure conference in Düsseldorf that he would hold talks with the Federal Ministry of Transport.
“The alternative traffic is putting a massive strain on the state and local roads in North Rhine-Westphalia,” said the Green Minister.
It is therefore clear that additional burdens on the regions must be “divided and compensated in a way that is fair to those who pay”.
“I see the federal government as having a duty here.”
In North Rhine-Westphalia there are a number of drastic closures as a result of the renovation of important motorway bridges.
The closures on the A42 through the Ruhr area and the A45 near Lüdenscheid in particular have placed a heavy burden on the regions due to the need to build a new bridge.
Near Cologne, heavy goods traffic was stopped for years with barriers in front of the dilapidated Leverkusen Bridge.
In the event of damage to the officially designated diversion routes during motorway closures, the federal government pays because it is the cause, said Krischer.
The example of the closed A42 shows that traffic on other municipal roads is also increasing significantly.
This is “a big issue” on the A42.
A lot of traffic now runs through Bottrop and Essen and is destroying the road infrastructure there.
But the federal government doesn't pay anything for this.
Krischer was unable to give an estimate of the extent of the possible damage to such secret routes.
But it is easy to tell from the condition of the road if there is suddenly a lot of truck traffic on a municipal road where hardly any trucks were driving before.
Krischer plans to address changes to the road traffic regulations with a view to alternative routes at the transport ministers' conference.
The road traffic regulations come from a time when there were no long-term motorway closures due to renovations.
“It is simply the case that we in North Rhine-Westphalia also have the greatest suffering,” said the minister, who currently chairs the Conference of Transport Ministers.
The state of North Rhine-Westphalia also wants to contribute to the costs of renovating closed routes and alternative routes, since these routes are on roads under the state's responsibility.
“That means we are ready to get involved with it.
But that cannot result in us doing the federal government’s entire job.”
At the same time, Krischer made it clear that the state would also have to pay for the renovation of diversions and alternative routes if roads were closed because bridges were being renovated under the state's responsibility.
Roads and tunnels in North Rhine-Westphalia are getting old and are in acute danger in many places, he said.
On the one hand, this has to do with the sharp increase in freight traffic, but also with the fact that too little has been invested in maintaining the infrastructure in recent decades.
In November, the state government presented a roadmap for improving the transport infrastructure in North Rhine-Westphalia with the “Road Infrastructure Renovation Offensive”.
Accordingly, around 400 bridges in the state's jurisdiction are to be replaced with new buildings within the next ten years.
As a start, 35 new bridges will be replaced this year.
A total of 220 million euros are planned this year for the renovation of roads, bridges and other road components on state roads in North Rhine-Westphalia alone.
In addition, an additional amount of 138 million euros is expected to be available for the maintenance of federal roads.
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The State Office for Roads.NRW is responsible for more than 17,000 kilometers of federal and state roads and more than 6,000 bridges.
The average age of bridges on federal and state roads is 50 years.
In order to speed up the projects, the state wants, among other things, to rely more heavily on modular construction in the future.
dpa