Photo credit: Ingo Joseph
by Arline L. Bronzaft, Ph.D., Board of Directors, GrowNYC, Co-founder, The Quiet Coalition, and Honorary Chair, Quiet American Skies
While the German government is committed to making the country climate-neutral by 2045, we learn in this phys.org article that it also plans to create Germany’s biggest motorway. This would involve widening a roadway outside the city of Frankfurt to 10 lanes. The roadway now has either six or eight lanes. The reason? Increased ridership on the road.
Germans are already speaking out against the expansion. One of the components of the project that disturbs them is that houses near the highway would have to be demolished to allow for the widened roadway. Even though there are barriers separating the roadway from nearby houses, residents say the traffic noise is already too loud and widening the road would only increase the noise. In addition, widening the roadway would situate the barriers closer to the homes. We also learn the extended roadway may adversely impact nearby bird populations.
Frankfurt city officials do not support the roadway expansion, despite the fact that the state government does. However, one of its representatives added that they expect to cover the road with a kind of “enclosure” to reduce noise. The final decision on the expansion rests with the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport in Berlin, and a spokesperson said that officials are still studying the expansion. This includes air pollution, impacts on nature and noise and traffic studies.
I was especially interested in this article because I was involved in stopping the roadway expansion on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, where I lived in a nearby two-family house. Ocean Parkway, which is about 5 miles long, runs from nearby Prospect Park to Brighton Beach. The parkway consists of a central roadway, pathways with benches on each side and a commercial roadway on each side near private homes and apartment complexes. Expansion involved removing the pathways and placing barriers in front of the houses.
But the parkway was never expanded. Instead, in 1975, it was designated as a landmark and the roadway was not widened, preserving the pathways and benches. Yes, community activists can prevent the extension of a roadway. According to this urbanareas.com article, Ocean Parkway planners were inspired by boulevards in Berlin and Paris. It will be interesting to see if the individuals opposing the roadway outside of Frankfurt will be successful.
