In Vienna, the Lobau nature reserve is once again threatened by a motorway project.
Although the project was abandoned in 2021, a motorway tunnel will finally be built under the Lobau nature reserve near Vienna. And while Peter Hanke, the Austrian Minister of Transport, is delighted, the Greens are denouncing it as an ecological absurdity.
It's now official. On Wednesday, October 29, Austria's federal road law was updated . It now includes details of the project to build the highly controversial highway tunnel that will pass under the Lobau nature reserve near Vienna. This is a necessary step before construction can begin, with "the first phase expected to start in spring 2026," reports the website of ORF, the Austrian national broadcaster .
Interviewed by the Viennese daily newspaper Die Presse , Vienna's mayor, Michael Ludwig, welcomed the news, emphasizing that "thousands of homes depend on it, in Vienna and the surrounding area." But environmental activists are completely baffled.As the TAZ newspaper points out , this decision comes just a few months after the publication of an assessment by the Austrian Federal Environment Agency, which recommended the project's withdrawal.
“The long history of the Lobau Tunnel […] began in 2001,” recounts ORF . Behind this controversial infrastructure lies a large-scale project aimed at relieving traffic congestion on Vienna’s roads. The tunnel, “8.2 kilometers long and located 60 meters underground,” is intended to “close the circle of the S1 ring road [which bypasses Vienna],” explains the Viennese investigative magazine Falter .
From its launch, the initiative met with strong opposition. The reason was its encroachment on the Lobau nature reserve, “a protected area of approximately 2,300 hectares” which is home to “ species that have become rare such as the European pond turtle, the crested newt of the Danube and the reed warbler” .
After years of legal battles, the project was abandoned in 2021 by the then Minister of Transport, Leonore Gewessler, according to the Viennese weekly newspaper Kurier . But it was revived by her successor, Peter Hanke, who gave the green light to the work and awarded the contract to the company Asfinag at the end of September, disregarding the conclusions reached by the Federal Environment Agency in February.
“We are being sent back decades,” denounced Leonore Gewessler , now head of the Green parliamentary group, “ to a transport policy whose mantra was: more concrete, more cars, more noise, more exhaust fumes!” More than 21,000 people have already signed an online petition launched by the Greens to “save Lobau” from being paved over, but without any guarantee that the government will reverse its decision.
Courrier International
