“People don’t want that.”
Wissing opposes speed limits on motorways
April 2, 2024, 1:11 a.m
It’s a topic that comes up every few months: a speed limit on German motorways. Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing is still not convinced by the measure. He suspects that there is no acceptance for this in Germany.
Although traffic does not contribute sufficiently to climate protection, Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing continues to oppose a speed limit on motorways. With regard to CO2 savings, he sees this as an ongoing issue, but not a solution, he tells the newspapers of the Funke media group. “It’s important that only measures that are accepted can be successful. If a speed limit of 120 kilometers per hour applies across the board on motorways, 80 on country roads and 30 kilometers per hour in urban areas, that will not be accepted in Germany. That’s what they want People don’t.”
Although the federal government believes that the climate target set for 2030 is achievable based on current greenhouse gas forecasts, transport remains the “problem child of climate protection,” Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck recently explained. Accordingly, the transport sector missed the climate target for 2030. Greenpeace then again called for immediate measures such as a speed limit. The Greens in the federal government have also been open to such a project in the past.
Surveys show more agreement
Even if Wissing emphasizes otherwise, some surveys have already shown that the majority of Germans are in favor of a speed limit on the motorways – but of 130 kilometers per hour. In a survey published a few weeks ago by the Federal Environment Agency, 42 percent said “yes, definitely”, while 22 percent tended to be in favor; It was 58 percent in a Forsa survey commissioned by RTL and ntv from 2022 and in another evaluation by Yougov, also published in 2022, it was 57 percent.
Wissing, on the other hand, said he was not convinced of a general speed limit. “If, for example, a direct route through the villages becomes worthwhile again because of a speed limit on the motorway, the residents are burdened with noise. We have built infrastructure so that people are relieved of traffic. And then suggestions come to motivate drivers to to choose the shorter route through the towns again,” said the minister. Other ways are therefore being taken to make transport more climate-friendly. In this context, Wissing referred, among other things, to the new biofuel HVO 100.