The City Council met: A final appeal from Leipzig in favour of the tunnel solution at Agra Park

Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar: Zum deutschen Artikel.

Is it all over? Or can the state government’s decision still be overturned – so that, instead of replacing the Agra Bridge on the B2 with a new structure in the 100-year-old park, a tunnel or underpass is built? This was the subject of a BSW motion at the council meeting on 1 July. A hearing in the state parliament now appears to have put a solution to all the problems on the table: a half-trough solution. Almost as cheap as building a new bridge. Yet BSW city councillor Eric Recke seems to have heard something completely different to CDU city councillor Andreas Nowak.

Both are also members of the state parliament. And ultimately, it is the state government alone that will decide which option for a new structure in Agra Park will be implemented. The state government has already had to put up with a great deal of criticism in recent months because it has quite clearly wasted many years in presenting a fully planned solution for the Agra crossing. After all, we’re talking about years here. The debate over whether to build a bridge, a trough or a tunnel is nothing new. It was already a topic of discussion for the Leipzig City Council back in 2010, when the council strongly advocated a tunnel solution. SPD city councillor Marius Wittwer has even dug out a resolution from that time from the archives.

After all, it had been clear since 2000 that the B2 bridge urgently needed to be rebuilt, when stress-corrosion cracking was first detected on the structure, which had been erected in 1976. It was this very fact that led the state government to decide in 2025 to plan the demolition and replacement of the bridge as quickly as possible. There would now be no time left to decide between a trough or a bridge. Nor was there any money available.

This, of course, made the question all the more pressing during the debate at the council meeting on 1 July: why, then, was it not planned and built back when the local authorities and the Free State still had money? Why did nothing happen then? A question also posed by Mayor Burkhard Jung, who took the debate very personally. After all, Leipzig had been calling since then for a tunnel to be built instead of a bridge that would cut through the landscape. The responsibility lies with the federal and state governments. The federal government is responsible for the construction because a federal road runs across the bridge.

The federal government in dithering mode

And back then, it was at least clear that it was the federal government – and thus the various federal transport ministers – who had failed to include such planning and funding for a B2 tunnel in the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan. Understandable. These gentlemen all hailed from the CSU, which ultimately preferred to prioritise construction projects in Bavaria.

But Saxony did not really sit on the issue, as FDP city councillor Sven Morlok pointed out in the debate; after all, he served as Saxony’s Transport Minister for the FDP from 2009 to 2014. The trough option had also been examined at the time. The main problem, which was already becoming apparent back then, according to Morlok, was the groundwater flow, into which both the tunnel and the trough would have to be built. And that problem remains unresolved to this day.

At the most recent state parliamentary hearing, which was attended by both Eric Recke and Andreas Nowak, not a single one of the invited experts was actually able to quantify the additional costs that would arise from building into the groundwater flow. And this is a long-term issue, as a water drainage system would then have to be operated permanently.

These may all be problems that can be solved through engineering. But the clock is ticking. The corrosion damage to the bridge is now so extensive that a rapid solution must be put in place. And from the Free State’s point of view, that means replacing the bridge with a new structure, which requires no new planning process or environmental impact assessment.

This would be different with a tunnel solution, as proposed by Eric Recke, even though Eric Recke suggested that this would result in a delay of half a year at best. No, two years, countered Sven Morlok, who, as a former transport minister, knows full well how long the necessary environmental impact assessment actually takes. On top of that comes the significantly longer construction period.

Commitments since 2013

But Burkhard Jung is also right. Since 2013, there has been a written agreement between Leipzig and the Free State stipulating that a tunnel solution is to be planned for the B2 in Agra Park. Not assessed, but planned. And the funds for this were to come from the decision not to proceed with plans for the A72 motorway, which the then Federal Ministers of Transport were determined to extend into the Leipzig city area. And, according to Jung, Leipzig had even held out the prospect of a financial contribution towards the tunnel. At that time, Leipzig still had some financial leeway.

The only problem is: nothing happened. The precious years during which the tunnel could have been planned and built slipped away. And the warning from the State Office for Road Construction and Transport came right in the middle of a period when the Free State could only just make ends meet with austerity budgets and Leipzig was even deep in a spiral of debt. In 2025, sudden and swift action was required. And as cheaply as possible. So a replacement structure was essentially the only solution left on the table.

It is only too understandable that, during the state parliamentary hearing, a sort of shallower trough suddenly seemed like a lifeline. However, Sven Morlok also summed up the problem with this approach. After all, the trough too would intrude into the groundwater. It is therefore questionable whether it will be as cost-effective as the bridge. And on top of that, there is something Eric Recke in particular did not want to acknowledge: the trough would cut right through the park. Unlike the bridge, neither people nor animals can cross it at ground level. So at least one more wildlife bridge would be needed. At the same time, the trough would protrude so far from the ground that it would block the view of the countryside to the right and left. This would have almost the same effects as the four-lane at-grade motorway originally planned in 1976. Perhaps a slight reduction in noise.

And, of course, pedestrian bridges would also be needed over the trough. That’s where the imagination runs out.

A signal to the state parliament

And so, as Green Party city councillor Kristina Weyh also noted, the approval of the BSW parliamentary group’s motion was, above all, a signal from the Leipzig City Council that it does not agree with the bridge solution. The motion had also phrased it accordingly as an appeal: “Leipzig City Council appeals to the Saxon State Government to examine, without delay, a partially covered trough solution as well as other alternatives to the new construction of the agra Bridge, and to lobby the Federal Government for funding. The speed and cost-effectiveness of reopening the transport link through agra Park must be the priority, but a solution that is sustainable in the long term and better integrated into the environment will create significantly fewer subsequent problems.”

Incidentally, the administration’s statement then listed all the dates on which the City Council passed resolutions on the tunnel solution and the ministries in Berlin and Dresden signalled their approval. And the most recent statement on this matter was not that long ago: “In 2021, the federal and state governments reaffirmed in a joint declaration of intent that a tunnel option would be preferable as a replacement for the bridge. However, the federal government stated even then that any additional costs compared to the bridge option would have to be borne by the Free State of Saxony.”

But the Free State then fell silent. And in 2026, the situation is now indeed a completely different one, as the administration’s position states: “It must therefore be recognised, in the overall context, that the financial situation of the Free State of Saxony and the City of Leipzig is very strained. Against this background, the city administration considers it unlikely that the Free State of Saxony will continue to cover the additional costs of a tunnel solution that are not funded by the federal government.”

But one thing, at any rate, has become clear from the debate: how the perfectly viable option of a tunnel solution was ultimately thwarted – primarily due to the stalling tactics in Berlin and Dresden – and dragged out for so long that the financial leeway eventually ran out.

Nevertheless, the majority of the council felt on 1 July that the issue was worthy of an appeal and approved the BSW motion by 30 votes to 25, with 6 abstentions. The state parliament intends to revisit the B2 bridge issue on 4 September. Whether there will then be any serious efforts to pursue each option remains entirely open.