It Can Only Cost More

For those who haven't been watching local news in Germany....the Stuttgart 21 affair continues on in high gear.  This is the project to bring modern railway operations into Stuttgart, involving a vast number of new subway tunnels and an amazing amount of money.  And the project is destined to take a decade to complete.

Today, it came out that while the local Greens have really fussed over and demanded a hand in the project....things in the mediation part of the deal are about to embarrass them in a major way.

The head guy in the negotiation team is now hinting that joint talks to fix a number of problems which the Greens have mentioned....WILL push up the cost of the project.  This mediator....Heiner Geißler.....isn't mixing any nice or pleasant words with the description of "fixes" to make everyone happy.

You can imagine the Greens meeting off in a secret session and asking themselves what happens when the public realizes that the things they've asked....actually pumped the cost up even more.  They will probably bring in a budget person to analyze the new requirements and confirm they screwed up.  Then they will bring over a public affairs guy to figure out how to explain this by Saturday, so that the Sunday editions of news to properly quote the leadership of the Greens.

The Stuttgart public has already accepted the project for the most part (three months into this project roughly at present).  They know the cost, and the time conditions.  I would speculate the biggest negative for a local guy in town is the traffic shut-down of various streets during the construction phase.  For a regional guy....the discussion over cost might matter more.

As for this working in the favor of the Greens in the upcoming election in the spring?  If this comes true over increased costs because of Green changes....the big massive attraction to the Greens will likely not occur.   Is the negotiation team using the naive business view of the Greens to cast them in this position?  The likely answer is yes.

I can imagine the Greens demanding that this park and that park be spared, and the plans guy just smiling because there's another 5 percent cost increase here and there....which the Green folks really can't comprehend triggering because they saved a park in the city.  This ought to make a great movie one day....how the Greens saved so much land, and cost so much more in building costs.