If you live in Wiesbaden....you know the 'game' to play if you want a quick ride to the Airport, or into Frankfurt city.....you take the S-Bahn out of the Wiesbaden station and waste around 30 minutes just to get through Mainz and 3 or 4 odd-stops....to get to the airport.....then it's a zero-stop situation if using a ICE-train onto Frankfurt.
So regionally....there's this ultra high-speed railway....skipping Wiesbaden, Mainz....in a minute or two....reaching the Airport, and in 3 minutes reaching Frankfurt.
For probably 15 years....the city of Wiesbaden has been begging for a 'stop' to be built....out of thin air....the ICE train would halt for a minute or two....then race onto the Airport....then race onto Frankfurt.
Several thousand Frankfurt workers live out of Wiesbaden, and this type of project would bring tears to their eyes....giving them back 70 to 80 minutes of the day.
This week, the ICE upper-management held a meeting....discussed the matter, cost, and priorities. The Wiesbaden 'fix' didn't make the list.
The odd piece of discussion? Well...this station being talked about is non-existent today....in Wallau. Personally, I don't consider Wallau a 'part' of Wiesbaden. It stands about 3 miles east of the Army Post.
What the pro-stop folks intend? They would find funds for some part of this....building a station next to the line, and by the autobahn....with a fair amount of parking (say in the range of 500 to a 1k parking spots). Right now today....nothing there exists.
With the trouble of planning (legendary in the region)....even if they got permission to proceed...it might be six to eight years before the whole thing was connected up.
The odd factor? Well...from the 6AM to 9AM Wiesbaden crowd....probably 50-percent of folks would quit riding the line across the river to Mainz/Airport.
But there is this one odd factor no one brought up.....if you ride on ICE....even for 5 minutes....you pay for a higher cost railway ticket. In a year....you could be talking about 800 Euro more. Course, you'd get 350 man-hours back on your yearly travels. Maybe folks would pay more
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