Re: Stuttgart 21 protests

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Alex!

Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> wrote:

> Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> [... S21 ...]

>> I'd say about 50-50.  Incidentally, are you aware that Deutsche Bahn
>> (German Railways) have put the project on hold for now?

> That was done to limit the amount of monetary damages (the current
> estimate is 1.5 billion euros at minimum) the land will have to pay
> Deutsche Bahn if the new government will be moronic enough to actually
> achieve cancellation of S21.

Or was it?  Thursday's Stern describes a leaked 130 page DB document
which outlines the project risks, and they are very many indeed.  A quick
summary of the article:

The geology is trickier than expected.  There's a lot more water to cope
with than officially admitted.  They haven't been able to find a civil
engineering company to dig a tunnel in Cannstatt, the one going under the
Mercedes Benz factory, because no firm is willing to take the risk of an
accident shutting down MB.  There's lots of land they need which hasn't
yet been acquired.  It's unclear whether the building of the needed
second platform at the new airport station has been authorised.  And so
on, and so on.

The costs look set to explode.  If all the identified risks happened, the
cost would be nearer 7 x 10^9 Euros than 4 x 10^9.  DB is unable to find
the technical experts it needs, which will delay the project even more.

All in all, a planning disaster.  I recommend you read the article.

As a matter of interest, there's a samizdat document circulating which
purports to demonstrate that the actual investment of DB in the project
is close to zero, and the entire costs will be carried by
Baden-Wuerttemberg (that means you).  If you were interested (which
you're probably not) I'd send you a copy.  Like all these partial
analyses, there's probably a lot of truth behind it, but it's
exaggerated.

> regards,
> alexander.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).