The Referendum Chatter

We have a referendum that is being pursued within the city limits of Wiesbaden.  It's reaching the point now where some folks are worried.

About two years ago, folks in the planning department got real serious about this tram idea.  You see Wiesbaden is a major town of 280,000....growing at a rate of 5,000 every five to seven years.  We have no subway system or trolly-car line.  Back seventy years ago....there was a basic no-thrills trolly-car system, and it was dumped in the 1950s.  So it's strictly a bus public transportation system today....with a light-rail system from the train station to three or four towns within the region.

The idea which they played with....was that they'd go and build a major tram, which would go from the Mainz-Kastel region (far SE part of the city), to the north end of Wiesbaden.  The general talk is that line one would be done, and maybe within another five years....a second line. 

Then they got Mainz all interested....where they wanted to connect to this line, and suddenly folks started to talk about the FOURTH bridge (yes, for over fifty years, there's been this chatter of adding another bridge to cross the Rhine between Mainz and Wiesbaden).  Suddenly, all kinds of chatter erupted and several ideas popped up. 

Mainz and Wiesbaden were now talking about this dramatic massive project with all kinds of bells and whistles.

Then the anti-tram crowd woke up.  They don't want the tram built because of the potential for noise. 

The city council and the political parties decided they needed public support, so this referendum idea got tossed around.  If it goes that far, they need a 60-percent to really feel good about the massive project.  No one can say with any authority....they'd get the 60-percent or more.  In fact, if it's less than 50-percent....the whole plan will just terminate right there.  And it might be 20 years before this kind of project would be rekindled.

I've lived around the city now for five years.  What'd I'd generally say is that this is a city which is somewhat planned around 150,000 residents and probably was perfect back in the 1970s.  The growth period, and the traffic issues.....connected with Mainz and it's problems....make this a difficult place to predict the future. 

Mainz has a harbor area project which will likely add another 5,000 residents to the city within three years.  Jointly, the two can project almost 650,000 residents by 2030.  Between the bridge issue....limited traffic lanes leading into both cities....and the Wiesbaden bus system....it's not a very positive position right now.  So this referendum is a massive storm that could fix problems or condemn them for a number of years.