If you follow local Wiesbaden (my town in Germany), there's hype now over a tram finally being pursued. The big hook? Well, in the past two months.....it's more or less agreed upon that it MUST connect to Mainz and it's network. And to do that....you have to cross the river.
The experts have now laid down the card that the Theodor Huess Bridge (over Mainz-Kastel) can NOT be used for a railway network. So that kinda means that a 4th bridge will have to be built.
But adding into this discussion....is the idea of converting the Theodor Huess Bridge into a walk or bike only bridge, making this bridge project in a mega four-lane, bike-lane, and two-lane tram crossing.
The talk now? Four years ago, you would have built the bridge right into the Mainz harbor area, but that's all being redesigned now into condo and housing. So the discussion centers on this idea of a bridge coming down Otto Suhr Ring on the Wiesbaden side....fairly near the bordello operation in Wiesbaden, and coming fairly near the harbor area of Mainz.
The amount of time to plan and execute this? Oh....yeah, one can grin and imagine this taking at least five years to design this, get permissions done and start work. You can figure it won't be done until 2025 at earliest. But the odd thing about this network is that you'd have to build another two extra years into the tram situation. Maybe they'd go and add an entire second network as part of some bigger plan.
Oh, if you were expecting a anti-tram situation to develop? Well...yeah, there's now a Wiesbaden group talking of opposing the line.
If you were to visit sometime after 2025...you'd probably be enticed by the tram network of Wiesbaden.
The name for this bridge? I will bet that both Mainz and Wiesbaden fight intensely over the naming rights and this ends up as a major mess.
Removing the Teodor Huess bridge as a crossing point? Most Americans who've been to the region for a tour....would readily admit that it was pretty easy to come off 455, enter Mainz-Kastel, and cross the bridge to be in the heart of Mainz in just a few minutes. This alternate location being discussed....would send you over to the Amonenburg area, cross the river, and put you on the far west end of Mainz.
Why the dramatic shift? Well...some folks are talking about traffic congestion and lessening traffic flow into both Wiesbaden and Mainz....forcing people onto public trams, and lessening pollution. We are reaching the stage where the two cities will a combined 550,000 residents within the next decade.
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