According to the German federal government's 2040 transport forecast, passenger and freight transport by rail in Germany will grow rapidly over the next 16 years, but lorries and cars will still be the dominant way of moving goods and people. Transport Minister Volker Wissing (Volker Wissing), who represents the Free Democrats (FDP), said in a statement that the German government “must invest in every mode of transport”, including renewing ageing roads, bridges and tunnels and expanding the rail network. “At the same time it is important to maintain roads and to build new ones, because cars are still the backbone of mobility in Germany,” Wissing stressed. The forecast sets out long-term scenarios describing how traffic in Germany will develop up to 2040.
The environmental organisations Greenpeace and VCD naturally criticised Wissing's calls to invest in new roads, saying that expanding Germany's already extensive road network will only increase car traffic. “Whoever builds roads will produce cars,” said VCD, an NGO for climate-friendly mobility. Germany has one of the densest motorway systems in the world – roughly 13,000 kilometres, VCD noted. A recent YouGov poll found that more than two thirds of Germans consider that to be enough, while five per cent want investment in building new motorways, Süddeutsche Zeitung reports.
“You have to ask yourself how much sense there is in drawing up forecasts that are not aimed at meeting climate targets,” DPA was told by Wuppertal Institute transport researcher Thorsten Koska. He criticised the fact that the forecast is based on existing infrastructure investment plans, which allocate more funding to roads than to rail. That means the share of road transport in the model remains high. The forecast also assumed that the commuter travel allowance will stay in its present form. Koska said this could be an instrument for cutting car traffic further.
“Despite the forecast growth in the rail sector, Germany will fail to meet two key mobility targets – doubling passenger rail volumes by the end of the decade and raising rail's share of freight to 25% of total transport volumes,” DPA writes. An alliance of climate NGOs, welfare organisations and business associations has already warned that cutting the state rail budget puts the mobility transition and climate targets at risk. The report also forecasts that by 2040 transport CO₂ emissions will fall by 77%, which is less than the target set in the Federal Climate Action Act, which is 88%. Germany's transport sector has failed to meet the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets it declared earlier. That suggests that extremely high, ambitious targets are simply not achievable in practice…