Line closure

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This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

Forchheim – Hemhofen line after the tracks were dismantled

Line closure is a term from the transport sector and means that a road or rail line is taken out of service and is therefore no longer available for traffic.

Legal foundations

Line closures take place in Switzerland according to the Railway Act (EBG), in Austria the Railway Act of 1957 (EisbG) and in Germany according to the General Railway Act (AEG).

For tram and subway routes, the Passenger Transport Act is the legal basis in Germany , and the Federal Act on Passenger Transport in Switzerland . In Austria, trams are treated like railways, the Railway Act regulates the closure and abandonment in Sections 28 and 29.

Germany

In Germany, according to the AEG, a distinction must be made between the closure and the exemption from railway operations.

Suspension of train traffic

At the beginning of a line closure there is a significant decline or the suspension of train traffic by the railway companies (EVU) that have been using the line up to then. In some cases the number of journeys is reduced to an absolute minimum (so-called alibi trains ; if only one train remains per day and direction, also alibi train pairs ); as a result, the route continues to lose attractiveness and demand, which in turn can be used as an argument for a complete discontinuation. Due to the lack of train path charges, maintaining the route for the railway infrastructure company (EIU) can become uneconomical, so that the closure is a possible consequence. Upcoming major investments can also contribute to this. In the public transport sector , the transport services are canceled by the responsible authority. In freight transport , the loss of large freight transport customers, but also business decisions by the RU (see MORA C ) can be the cause.

Legally, the cessation of train traffic is not yet a shutdown within the meaning of Section 11 AEG. The RIU remains obliged to keep the route in a safe condition and to grant any railway undertaking that wants to use the route with its vehicles non-discriminatory access.

Decommissioning of the infrastructure

Freight trains to BOA run again between Bad Salzungen and Dorndorf

The closure of a rail line according to Section 11 of the General Railway Act (AEG) means that the railway infrastructure company (RIU) is released from its operating obligation . A prerequisite for decommissioning is an application from the IM in which it proves that it can no longer be expected to continue to maintain the infrastructure in question economically and that it has unsuccessfully offered the infrastructure to other IMs for takeover. The takeover offer is to be published in the Federal Gazette.

The line is closed for federal railways through an administrative act by the Federal Railway Office . The authority responsible under state law is responsible for other railway infrastructure. A shutdown releases the IM from its obligation to continue to maintain the infrastructure. Since the operating license expires with the closure, public rail traffic is no longer permitted on such a disused route. A tourist trolley service taking place on some such routes is not legally classified as rail traffic.

Even after a line has been closed, the railway infrastructure remains subject to AEG's specialist planning law in accordance with Section 38 of the Building Code (BauGB). In terms of planning law, this means that the route is still only available for railway operations and may not be planned for other purposes. Recommissioning can take place without a renewed planning approval decision ; on a disused route are z. B. Reconnection trips with ancillary vehicles possible.

The shutdown can be reversed with a new operating license according to § 6 AEG. Another possibility is the operating license according to the regulation on the construction and operation of connecting railways (BOA) with the approval of the state railway supervision .

Exemption from railway operations

Only the exemption from railway operation purposes according to § 23 AEG (often also called deedication ) removes the area from the railway's specialist planning rights and returns it to the planning authority of the municipality, which it can then re-plan for other development. Even after the exemption, the route can still be kept free in the zoning plan for later reactivation.

history

Rail loading of Enercon wind turbines in the Aurich-Nord industrial area

Between 1994 and 2004, more than 400 km of rail lines were shut down in Germany each year. Most of the lines (599 km) were closed in Saxony-Anhalt during this period, followed by North Rhine-Westphalia (574 km) and Bavaria (522 km). A number of railway lines are also being dismantled ( dismantling ), for example in order to set up a cycle path on the route .

Sometimes disused routes are reactivated. For example, the importance of the Abelitz – Aurich (13 km) railway decreased sharply after the Second World War. At the end of 1993 the traffic was stopped; Hardly anyone could imagine that the route could gain importance again. In the following years, the Aurich company Enercon - it manufactures wind power plants - grew very strongly; as well as the length and weight of the built rotor blades (for more details see the list of Enercon wind turbines ). This made it more and more difficult to transport them by road. The importance of the railway line became so great that Enercon made further investments in Aurich expressly dependent on reactivating the railway line; This happened in 2008 (more in the article on the railway line).

See also

Germany:

Denmark

Italy

United Kingdom

  • Due to the so-called Beeching ax , a concept of the British government, numerous British railway lines were shut down from the 1960s. Some routes were not completely shut down, but reduced to a minimum number of "alibi trains ", the so-called parliamentary trains or ghost trains .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Consolidated federal law: Entire legal provision for the 1957 Railway Act, version from today, accessed on July 13, 2015
  2. ↑ See for example [1] or [2] >
  3. ↑ § 4 AEG
  4. ↑ § 14 AEG
  5. ↑ § 11 AEG
  6. ↑ Detailed description of the procedure on the decommissioning website ( memento of November 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) at the Federal Railway Authority
  7. ↑ § 6 AEG
  8. ↑ See: Reinhard Dietrich : Beginning and End of Railway Infrastructure , in: Deutsches Verwaltungsblatt 2007, 657–664.
  9. ↑ § 23 AEG
  10. ^ Website release ( memento from November 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) at the Federal Railway Authority
  11. ↑ Report rail network is getting smaller . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International , issue 11/2005, p. 503 f.

Web links

literature