Munich (dpa / lby) - The Bavarian state government has known since April 2020 of potentially significantly higher costs for the construction of the second Munich S-Bahn trunk line. This emerges from a response from the Bavarian Ministry of Transport to a request from the FDP member of the state parliament, Sebastian Körber. On April 28, 2020, the Ministry of Transport's construction supervision "cited a possible cost increase from 3.8 billion euros to 5.2 billion euros for the first time based on a rough estimate". That would be a few months earlier than previously known. The paper is available from the German Press Agency, the “Münchner Merkur” reported about it first.
However, the ministry emphasizes that these were only rough estimates "which could never be a sufficiently reliable substitute for missing DB data for political decision-making or public communication". According to the ministry, all decisions could only be based on "well-founded and finally checked statements and information from the project sponsor" - Deutsche Bahn.
As is well known, the Ministry of Transport is now assuming that the costs for the construction of the second S-Bahn tube across Munich city center are likely to increase to as much as 7.2 billion euros. In addition, the commissioning could be delayed from 2028 to 2037. Bahn boss Richard Lutz still did not give any specific figures in July - the railways will put the facts on the table at the beginning of October. However, Lutz admitted: "But we can certainly say that it will be more expensive and it will take longer."
In response to Körber's request, the Ministry of Transport once again critically states that Deutsche Bahn "has not provided any reliable and official figures to date - neither on the costs nor on the duration of the construction project".
Körber criticized the state government in "Münchner Merkur": "They swept it under the carpet." As early as April 2020, "the alarm bells of the state government should have rung". After all, a cost increase from 3.8 to 5.2 billion euros is "nothing trivial".
