Wiesbaden Tram Chatter

I've essayed this ongoing discussion a couple of times over the past two years.  The city council finally went to the next step....a city-wide vote on 1 November.  Subject will be Tram: yes or no.

Presently, the city is serviced by buses, and to a lesser degree S-Bahn trains to regional areas around the city, which go to the train station on the south end of town.  For a city of 285,000 today and likely to be 315,000 in the next twenty years....mass transit is a big deal.

The tram discussion?

Originally, the idea was to have a new bridge built to Mainz, and this mostly went nowhere (because of the environmental law limiting the option of passing over the island between the two cities).  Eventually, the Wiesbaden planning group said 'fine'.....no bridge....we'll just go to a tram to cover one section of town.

Cost factor?  Right now....300 million Euro.  Yeah, it's a fair amount of money, and with typical German planning results of the past couple of decades....you can figure that it'll go past 400 million Euro easily. 

It would go from the Theodor-Huess Bridge (far SE) to the Bebrich neighborhood, then north to the train station, then to the center of town, and finally out to the westend of Wiesbaden.

Hard sell?  That's the big part of the deal.  A lot of people don't want it near their neighborhoods, then there's the chat of 'noise' or a long shutdown for construction.  I would take a guess that forty-percent of the residents are guaranteed to vote against the tram....maybe more.

If it's a no-vote?  This goes away, and I suspect the bridge or tunnel idea will come back in some form.

Would all of the tram connect up?  That's another part of the story.  They say (at least from the regional prospective)....it would connect to Mainz in some way, and then to the northern region beyond Wiesbaden (Bad Schwalbach).  This part of the story hasn't been actively laid out.  If you wanted the Mainz connection, you'd have to arrange for a one-year project as a minimum....to build tracks over the Theodor Huess Bridge.  If locals knew of this renovation project and lessening of traffic over the bridge....they'd go very negative about the whole thing.  Again, we go back to that stupid bridge issue.

So maybe this whole tram discussion dies off in November, or maybe it goes to the next level.