Regiotram Aachen
Ten years after the first attempt to give Aachen (Germany) back its trams was shot down in a referendum, there is a new tram project. Has been for a while, actually, but a few weeks ago it got a website as well.
Unlike the sadly dead Campusbahn, this project envisions a regional line that travels from Baesweiler via Alsdorf and Würselen (all essentially suburbs of Aachen) into Aachen city center. This is a corridor that already sees some very extensive bus and car traffic. Right now we’re very early in the planning stages, with most details still up in the air, but it definitely looks like it can be a very good project: It’ll reduce pollution, and it will allow more people to commute from cheaper and quieter parts into Aachen with its expensive rents and ground prices.
The flip side is that we, and by “we” I mean “all of us who live in the Aachen region and care about efficient public transport”, which probably means only me here on Tumblr, need to look back at the arguments of the “Campusbahn=Größenwahn” NIMBY initiative from ten years ago, because they will surely reappear sooner or later. They were wrong then and are wrong now, but they seem easy, obvious and appealing, so we’ll need to respond to them.
The first point back then was costs. For the new project, we don’t know yet what they will be. It’ll be less than the Campusbahn project, probably, because there is more state and federal money and the whole project is somewhat smaller (and also distributed over more towns). But it won’t be cheap.
Still, it’s worth it as an investment in the future. And we can’t forget that we just accept the costs of individual car infrastructure like that. For example, we all accept that the Turmstraße bridge in Aachen (which is crumbling and will be torn down next month) will be rebuilt in the old size, instead of just for pedestrians and bicyclists. Spending money on good infrastructure is something we need to do, and spending some of that on a new tram instead of incremental repairs or expansions of roads can be a very good idea in the long run.
Another point was the rearrangement of the bus network and the need for people to change from local buses to the tram, instead of the one-seat rides the current system offers. That is going to be inevitable: The tram transports more people for the same money once it’s there, so running buses in parallel to it makes no sense.
However, thanks to the higher frequency, better vehicles and dedicated right of way, the tram offers a higher quality connection overall. Most people’s trips will get significantly shorter even if they do have to wait at an interchange point, because the longest part of the journey gets quicker.
Back then people also feared traffic jams. And yes, the construction works will be annoying and cause traffic jams for a couple of years. Shoutout to our neighbours in Liège who are experiencing this due to their tram construction right now. But this is a thing that needs to be thought of long term: A few years of disruption, but decades of benefits. Again, I keep coming back to the Turmstraße bridge, which will also disrupt traffic a lot for years, but it’s obvious that this is needed.
In the long run, the tram will also probably reduce capacity for cars in some places. Things where lanes might be turned into tram only lanes and so on. And trams will not reduce traffic jams on the relevant roads by much. It’s the old induced demand story: As long as people are willing to endure Aachen city traffic, the roads will keep being full. However, the tram ensures that way more people can get into the city comfortably and quickly. The long-term traffic situation will probably be around the same as it was, maybe slightly worse, for cars; but it will be much better for people all around (yes, public transit users are people too, and you might even become one of them if there is a high quality service). This is not the same as a traffic chaos.
The archived NIMBY website also has something in there about lost workplaces because businesses have to shut down; I think we can safely ignore that. In the long term, good public transport access has always proven to be a benefit for retailers and offices.
Then there is the point about alternatives: Could you use more buses? Well, no, the study on the website points that out quite clearly. The Aachen bus network is at capacity, and there isn’t enough room to add much more buses (not to mention that we have a severe lack of bus drivers here). Also, an extended bus service would not get any state or federal money, but I think that’s a secondary concern when it’s quite clear that it just wouldn’t provide the necessary benefits.
What about existing rail lines, then? There are a lot of those, and the study also looked at options for reactivating these; projects along these lines have existed since 1998 (that’s why our mainline DMUs have blinkers in them). The fundamental problem is that these lines were built in the 19th and early 20th century to move coal towards industry, not to move people towards city centres. They’re just massive detours for most connections, and run through open fields and industrial areas rather than where people live. It’s also very important to note that this infrastructure is close to saturation as well; for example, the main Herzogenrath - Aachen West - Aachen central - Stolberg line is officially over capacity.
You can’t really move more people into Aachen by rail without severely expanding the infrastructure, especially if you want to run at high user-friendly frequencies.
I’m sure there will also be some people who will talk about some Gadgetbahn type thing, or something with autonomous vehicles and hydrogen buses and what not. I hope we can ignore them and no politicians listen. Remember, the first rule of autonomous cars is that there are none now and we don’t know when there will be; and massive green sources of hydrogen are also still in the future. Electrified trams are “not innovative” because they’re stupid but rather because they don’t need to be. They’re reliable, proven, light-weight and cheap, all things that you really want in your public transit system.
The important takeaway from all of this is that this is a long-term project that will impact the fate of Aachen and the Nordkreis for generations, and it will deliver real tangible benefits over this timescale (as well as immediately when it opens). Especially if it manages to become the starting point for a new Aachen tram network, which is urgently needed. And the main point is all about capacity, allowing more people to travel faster. The need is there, and the tram solves it.
