A side note, which was also made on a completely different motorway construction site, has rekindled the decades-old dispute about the expansion of the A 643 in Mainz.

The question is whether the four-kilometre stretch following the completely newly built Schiersteiner Bridge "consistently" also has to have six lanes.

Which, among other things, the Federal Ministry of Transport wants.

Or whether, in the interest of nature conservation, it might not also be sufficient to leave the section up to the Mainz triangle with four lanes and only add two hard shoulders that need to be specially upgraded and that would be opened to traffic if necessary.

Such an approach is preferred by the SPD and the Greens in Mainz and Rhineland-Palatinate.

Markus Schug

Correspondent Rhein-Main-Süd.

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In mid-June, Oliver Luksic (FDP), Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transport, during a visit to the construction site on the Salzbach Viaduct in Hesse, casually confirmed that the six-lane expansion of the A 643 should remain.

This means that Mainz's wishes for a four-plus-two solution that takes up less space would not be heard in Berlin.

And that despite the fact that at the beginning of the year Mayor Michael Ebling (SPD) and Transport Director Janina Steinkrüger (Die Grünen) once again emphatically spoke to Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP), who himself comes from Rhineland-Palatinate, in favor of the "slimmed down variant" also demanded by environmental and nature conservation groups. had advertised.

Green head of traffic for the expansion

A statement by the Wiesbaden head of transport, Andreas Kowol (The Greens), apparently hurts the SPD and the Greens in Mainz more than the expected rejection from the Federal Ministry, which was not the first time.

In an interview with the online newspaper Mainz&, he is said to have spoken of a "stair joke" when, after the renovation of the Schierstein Bridge, on which traffic should flow as smoothly as possible from the summer of 2023, the Mainz side is now looking at the six-lane expansion that has also been planned for a long time of the directly adjoining stretch of motorway would be dispensed with.

You live in a rapidly growing metropolitan area with many commuters, for which a high volume of cars is to be expected in the future.

For a Green, this is a “completely incomprehensible attitude” in times of climate protection and the mobility revolution, according to the Mainz Social Democrats.

Unfortunately, it fits in with the politics of the neighboring city, in which the construction of a city railway was rejected by referendum in 2020.

From the point of view of the Mainz SPD, that would have been a project “that would have promoted mobility in the western Rhine-Main area”.

The Mainz Greens consider the "nature protection area of ​​European importance" threatened by expansion and the adjacent Lenneberg Forest to be so important that "every square meter should be protected".

Anything else is a mortal sin, according to the 4,000 supporters who have signed an online petition so far.