Wiesbaden City Bahn Vote

Vote occurred in Wiesbaden today on the tram proposal.

1. Total number of people showing up and voting?  210k (remember, 291k residents).  

NO-vote (no tram): 61-percent  YES-vote (pro-tram): 39-percent.

I should note of the 280-odd districts....theres only around five or six which had more than 50-percent for the YES-vote.  An overwhelming number (95-percent of districts) voted NO in the majority. 

2.  Cost of the Bahn idea?  Well, it was going to be figured at 426 million Euro (half-a-billion dollars roughly), for what amounted to 40 kilometers of track.  

3.  The rule of the vote measure was that you had to have 15-percent of total voters registered in the city....to carry it to a conclusion.  Right now, appears way over 50-percent voted, so it's absolutely final.  

4.  What triggered this tram discussion?

Basically, renovation was going on with one of the three local bridges crossing the Rhine (we have only three bridges going across...for 20 miles down the river, and around five miles up the Rhine...going toward Frankfurt).  The renovation was the building of a new bridge (within 300 ft of the old bridge), and the old bridge would then be torn down.  Some construction worker hit the column of the old bridge and made it unstable. 

For roughly 8 months, they had the old bridge closed and relied upon two bridges for ALL traffic (yeah, it was screwed up and a mess for everyone).

The state offered up money to build a new bridge (a fourth one).  The ONLY practical location for it?  Over an island, and there's a law preventing such construction (over islands).

About a year was wasted chatting over the new bridge idea, then they gave up.  So the idea was....take the money offered, and build a tram.  You see, Wiesbaden has 291k residents and is one of the largest cities in Germany, without a trolley-car or light-rail type operation.

The problem that set people off?  Well, after they drew the map....it had to hit six particular neighborhoods in the city, and each one got angry over this....saying they didn't want it.  Added to this....environmentalists got angry over the plan to cut down 200-plus trees along the route.  Noise?  That got into the chatter as well.  Then you had the length of time for this to get finished....with the city claiming they could do the job in three years, and NO one believed that story (suggesting it could be five to seven years).  

The vote in simple terms, had turned up a lot of neighborhood groups which were either for or against the idea of a tram. 

5.  What happens now after the NO-vote?  The city council will drop the idea entirely.  

They might go and pick up the bridge idea again, but frankly.....if you gaze at the map, it's just one single area that makes sense for the Wiesbaden and Mainz area, and it has to go over an island.  

I might go and suggest that the Kaiser Brucke (the local railway bridge which was built over 100 years ago....does go over a island).  Maybe it's time to discuss replacing it, and putting up a two lane railway bridge and four-lane car lane situation, with a bike lane as well.  A fight by the environmentalists?  More than likely.  

Long-term affect if nothing is done?  I would suggest within five years....some parts of downtown Wiesbaden will have to be declared non-car activity, or go to charging a toll for entry into the absolute downtown area.  

The idea of bikes increasing?  Most areas of town don't allow the space to safely bike (my impression).  

Tram-wise, this discussion is dead now.