Plans for a driverless magnetic train that will travel through Berlin carrying passengers and goods are underway as part of the local government’s efforts to boost the German capital’s green credentials.
The project, proposed by the city’s new conservative-led government, is said to have sufficient political support and, its supporters say, will help Berlin achieve its goal of becoming net zero by 2045.
A 5-7km pilot strip of magnetic levitation (maglev) at an estimated cost of €80m-€85m (£70m-£74m) could be in use within two years, Dirk Stettner, the parliamentary faction leader of the Christian Democrats ( CDU) said, referring to the advantages of a magnetic train over the existing, extensive underground and overground networks.
At a time when Berlin’s transport company, the BVG, is so short of drivers that it has reduced its timetable by around 7%, Stettner said the fact that the train is self-driving as well as being cheaper and easier to build than ‘ an underground line. was a further advantage.
But environmentalists condemned the plans, countering CDU claims that the trains were futuristic, instead calling them expensive, energy-hogging and futile.
The project aims to revive the so-called M-Bahn of the 1980s, from Kreuzberg to Tiergarten in the western part of the city. A test stretch was underway by 1984 and was used regularly.
It was demolished in 1991, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to allow the restoration of the U2 underground line, which had been damaged by the construction of the infamous Cold War barrier that cut the city in two .
At a recent presentation of his plans, including slick architectural sketches, Stettner said there were many ideas about how to make practical use of a new M-Bahn in a city that retained the scars of division.
“We want to choose a good test route, which makes sense from a logistical point of view, and to ensure that it remains part of a whole network and is not seen as temporary,” he said.
Ute Bonde, the head of the VBB transport network linking the neighboring federal states of Berlin and Brandenburg, expressed her support for the plan, saying Berlin, which remains heavily dependent on cars, needs innovative ideas to get people out of their cars and onto trains .
“This could be a useful extension of the existing railways in the city. It is quiet, cheaper and can be built as either an elevated or a low-level train, and can be run on solar power,” she told the RBB24 radio station.
But environmentalists questioned the truth of the argument that the construction of the M-Bahn would contribute to better climate protection. Instead, they called for the expansion of the existing extensive infrastructure of overground and underground trains, trams and buses.
Tilmann Heuser of the Society for the Protection of the Environment and Nature said the idea was a “mockery for everyone who is serious about rapidly improving climate action”. He added: “It cannot be our purpose to fund absurd projects like this.”
Heuser asked that the climate funds be thought through more carefully. “The climate crisis is too much of a threat for us to play with it as an excuse for a little fun. Fantasy projects made of concrete will contribute nothing to climate protection goals,” he said.
Several inventors were behind the creation and development of magnetic levitation, from French American Émile Bachelet, whose electromagnetic levitation and propulsion train was first demonstrated in 1912, to English inventor Eric Laithwaite, whose maglev creation was the first was in commercial operation. Birmingham in the 1980s, later closed over reliability issues.
German inventors are seen as the force behind modern monorail systems. But they are much more widespread elsewhere, such as in China and Japan, than in Europe.
In the mid-90s, there were plans for the first stretch of magnetic rail to connect Berlin and Hamburg in less than an hour. However, the project, which had many opponents, including environmentalists, was abandoned in 2000 due to cost concerns.
The new M-Bahn project could fall victim to a similar lack of funding before it has even properly begun, amid uncertainty over the future of the federal government’s multibillion-euro climate funds, which the Berlin government had hoped to using his part for the scheme.
Last month, Germany’s highest court blocked the federal government’s plan to shift leftover Covid-era aid to finance projects to tackle the climate emergency, leaving many policy decisions in limbo.
Taz, the Berlin daily, called it a “fraud” that the project should be financed from climate funds.
“If the funds survive the court’s earthquake decision, they should be used to fund effective ways to reduce CO2 emissions, and to adapt to climate change, not for ‘maybe nice to have’,” it wrote in an editorial.
The M-Bahn was the equivalent of the CDU pointing the middle finger in the faces of climate protection advocates, it added.
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