Rede zum Round Table Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link (englisch)
Your Royal Highnesses,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The aim is to travel from Hamburg to Copenhagen in just two and a half hours. Its an ambitious goal. In order to achieve it, Denmark and Germany have agreed to take up the challenge of building what will probably be the longest undersea tunnel in the world the Fehmarn Belt Tunnel, which will stretch almost 18 kilometres.
The German task is to create the connections with the hinterland, so that trains, which will speed through the tunnels under the Baltic Sea at up to 200 kilometres per hour, are not forced to brake abruptly as soon as they reach the south beaches of Fehmarn.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Metropolitan Region has a huge interest in ensuring good links with Scandinavia. Hamburg is the logistics hub for Northern Europe, the place where port and railway form a perfect symbiosis to ensure that goods travel rapidly and reliably to customers all over the world. The Fehmarn Belt Tunnel will help us to perform this task even better.
The fixed link across the Fehmarn Belt is also a project of European dimensions. It closes the gap in the cross-European network between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean. This Danish-German link will join the forests of Finland with the Italian Alps. Europe will draw yet closer together thanks to this traffic artery.
Copenhagen will, so to speak, move 160 kilometres closer to Hamburg. That is almost within cycling distance: my counterpart in Copenhagen, Frank Jensen has already suggested that, if Hamburgs bid to host the Games is successful, the road cycle races at the 2024 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, should pass through the projected Fehmarn Belt Tunnel.
Looking at the matter like this, Copenhagen is already a destination for a cycle trip.
We shall go no deeper into the question of whether we would all be fit enough for such a cycle ride, but it does show what close neighbours our cities are set to become.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Danish Parliament has passed the law allowing the construction of the tunnel to go ahead, awarded the project top priority and ensured funding. We are very grateful for such tremendous commitment and impressed by the speed which our Danish partners are working with.
The task for the German side is no less challenging and ambitious, because the Fehmarn Belt fixed link will mean more traffic passing through Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg.
One effect will be more freight and passenger trains on the railways, especially on the route from Hamburg to Fehmarn via Ahrensburg and Lübeck. Some of the traffic strain, including noise, must be taken off these tracks, to ensure that commuters as well as residents also welcome the new proximity.
The metropolitan region needs an extension to the S4. It will considerably improve local traffic in and around Hamburg. The new line would separate the tracks used by rail freight and long distance passenger services from those used by local commuter trains. That would then at the same time create the capacity needed on the TEN route from Hamburg to Lübeck to Copenhagen.
The road links will have to be upgraded in a similar way.
These are big tasks, now being tackled jointly by Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and the Federal Government.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
People say that Your Royal Highnesses, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Denmark, have a soft spot for the Olympic Games. We have heard that you first met in 2000, during the Olympic Summer Games in Sydney. I take that to be a good omen. If we succeed in bringing the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games to Hamburg in 2024, you are, of course, cordially invited to attend.
Obviously, we do not expect you to cycle here - even though I assume that by then the tunnel will be open.
I hope these talks are going to be a success all round.
Thank you very much.
Es gilt das gesprochene Wort.