Tram Day?

 A couple of days from now, in the Wiesbaden area (my home district)....a vote comes up for the public.  It's out of cycle, and to be honest, if they get 40-percent of the public to show up and vote....it'll be a miracle.  

The vote?  It's something that the city council decided not to decide upon.  It would be a public thing. 

Around four years ago, with the new bridge going up on the west-end of Wiesbaden...over the Rhine....alongside the old bridge....some guy bumped one of the old bridge's columns, and triggered this catastrophic event (it became unstable....the old bridge). In a matter of minutes, they shut down the bridge and caused a mass 'pain-in-the-ass' for commuters who used that bridge daily.  There were only two other alternate bridges in the region, and they weren't truly capable of sustaining all the traffic from this episode.  

During this period, the chatter started up....why not build a 4th bridge.  For six months, this was tossed around. Funding was not an issue.  But the only viable solution was a bridge which would pass over an island.  This became a delicate topic because there's a German law....you can't build bridges over islands unless an awful lot of environmental pain is suffered.  Eventually, this idea of the 4th bridge was thrown out.

So the funding sat there....with this new idea tossed around.  Why not build a tram for Wiesbaden?  I know, it has nothing to do with a bridge, but why give up funding?

For the record, Wiesbaden has 293k residents, and the Mainz region has around 200k residents.  Mainz has had a tram (actually two routes) for over fifty years.  Wiesbaden has had the bus business since WW II....with a minor trolly-car operation that ran for several decades (at the end of the 1800s and into the 1930s).  

So the route was drawn, from Mainz-Kastel (far east end of town) to the Bahnhof area, onto the shopping district, and would extend up to Schlangenbad area (far west, out-of-town).  

Then the pro-bahn and anti-bahn folks settled upon upon the agenda.  The anti-bahn folks don't want the noise or the disruption to car-traffic.  An enormous amount of this route would be on the actual road itself, which would slow down traffic.  The pro-bahn people think that more residents would ride the tram and lessen traffic. 

This vote is to approve the construction, or to forbid the construction.  If they fail the vote?  No one says much, but I would imagine this whole bridge over the Rhine topic will come back up....or maybe a tunnel under the river instead.  

Finally, just this one odd factor.....Probably 90-percent of the folks voting....have no plus-up or benefit from the tram.  They live in an area where the tram will not touch, and they don't work near the tram line.  So just convincing that group to get up on a Sunday morning and vote....is a miracle by itself.  

Note: Wiesbaden is noted as the largest city in Germany, without a light-rail/tram line/trolly-car operation.  And I will personally attest to the fact that rush-hour traffic has made the interior of the city miserable and impossible over the past decade.