Minister to use exemption provision for longer, heavier vehicles

Berlin. Germany's Federal Transport Ministry is minded to use an exemption provision to allow the controversial trials of the 25-metre vehicles to take place, it has emerged. The ministry's draft provision was sent to several organisations on Monday for their assessment. The Pro-Rail Alliance announced that it would check to see whether the provision was legally watertight. "We are sceptical as to whether the legal basis for the trials of longer vehicles can simply be created without the involvement of parliament's second chamber, the Federal Council," said Dirk Flege, managing director of the Pro-Rail Alliance, on Tuesday in Berlin.  He pointed out that a legal assessment carried out by the German Institute for Urban Studies (Difu) in September 2010 concluded that national trials of longer, heavier vehicles (LHVs) would only be permissible if both chambers of the Federal Parliament were to pass the appropriate legislation. Merely using an exemption provision to enable the trials to take place would be unlawful, according to Difu's autumn assessment.

Currently, seven federal states have said that they would participate in the planned trials. These are: Bavaria, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Saxony, Schleswig Holstein, Hesse and Thuringia. The majority of the federal states are still opposed to LHV trials. However, only three states have currently developed concrete routes, including for lower-order highways: Lower Saxony, Schleswig Holstein and Thuringia. The federal government's draft provision explicitly calls on the other states to name suitable routes in their territories by the beginning of September.