About once or twice a year, I'll essay on the Stuttgart-21 project. To refresh folks.....back around fifty years ago, the city authorities in Stuttgart came to realize that they had a city transportation plan which was reaching maximum capacity. They needed a major overhaul of the city railway system, the tram plan, and expansion into high-speed railway operations. They sat and planned through various ideas.
In the 1990s, they finally came to the major ideas and started to get political acceptance. For the CDU (in power at the time), it was no problem. In fact, the SPD folks came easily into acceptance.
The problem though.....this was not a simple three-year project with two or three major pieces. You were talking about digging up Stuttgart for a period of ten years, tearing down the old train-station, and making life rough for a fair number of folks.
So entered the Green Party. As the plan went into the first step....they went into a 'fight-position'. They forced delays. At one point, they wanted the entire plan scrapped.
What occurred then is an epic story. The SPD folks? They fell apart. They are no longer a major player in Stuttgart politics. The Greens consumed their voters. The CDU? They lost probably half of their supporters in the city. So just when you felt total Green victory.....they put the halt of the project to a city vote, and the city voted down the Green halt. The Greens were now stuck as a city leader and having to manage the project. Failure? It's on the Greens now.
So this week, it's come up again about escalating cost. The Greens (using both the city and state features) are refusing to cough up more money, and they want the Berlin leadership or the German Bahn folks (the railway people) to pay ALL escalating costs.
It's going to court.
Based on their agreements.....I have my doubts that the Greens can win this and the cost factor of escalation will fall upon them.
The current end-date? Well....at present, we are up to 2025 now and with legal efforts going on....I suspect it'll go to near 2030. Will it look like the original plan? Some people will argue that the original plan has fallen completely, and they are on revision number 300 at this point.
If you were looking for a 500-page PhD thesis project to talk about the ways of screwing up a major infrastructure project? Well....this is the perfect topic.
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