Plans for Bonn City planning considers cable car system realistic for 2025
Beuel · For Helmut Wiesner, head of the city planning department, one thing is certain: the gondolas for the planned cable car system will stop on the Beuel side of the river at Schießbergweg. He considers a start in 2025 to be realistic.
It is now no longer a question of which route the planned cable car line will take, but only where the supports will be placed and how large the stations will be. The feasibility study commissioned by the City of Bonn has clearly defined the routing of the cableway, according to the city administration. They determined that stations would be built at the following locations: University Hospital, Hindenburgplatz, UN Campus stop, Rheinaue and Schießbergweg.
In an interview with the GA, Helmut Wiesner, head of city planning, clarified the current status. He was reacting to recent meetings of local politicians and citizen groups in Beuel which gave the impression that a decision to build a cable car station in Beuel had not yet been made. There had also been criticism that the city administration had not published all the facts and assessments of the feasibility study.
"We already presented the feasibility study to various council bodies and the public about three years ago. Now we are in the phase of standardized evaluation," explained Wiesner. At this stage, facts and data are being gathered for the financing negotiations with the state and federal government to determine cost sharing. "In this phase, however, the City of Bonn does not constantly publish the current status of planning, but we will inform the political bodies when there are firm conclusions reached," emphasized Helmut Wiesner.
The city planning council is assuming that the planning department will submit a proposal for a resolution to the City Council by the end of the year - or by the beginning of 2021 at the latest: "Then the City Council must decide. After that, a planning approval procedure will be initiated with the Cologne district government." The city expects a planning period of two to three years. The construction period will not last that long. Asked whether it was presumptuous to assume that the cable car will start in 2025, Wiesner answered: "No, that is realistic."
According to the city of Bonn, some recent criticism had been based on a misunderstanding about the current status of the project. There had been a question as to which of the two locations in Ramersdorf would reach more passengers, and that had been answered a long time ago - Schießbergweg. According to Wiesner, this is mainly due to a new stop for the S13 at the Telekom campus, which Deutsche Bahn will soon start building. In the future, fast trains will stop there every 20 minutes, and potential passengers from Cologne will be able to board the cable car. The City of Bonn also thinks that the underground station in Ramerdorf should be connected to the cable car line. But this could also be done using rental bikes, rental scooters and tram line 62. Orig. text: Holger Willcke Translation: Carol Kloeppel
