A bridge too far?

To all lovers of Mosel wines, in particular those from Erden, Rachtig and Urzig you might be interested to look at these plans here for a motorway bridge over the Mosel cutting right through the above-named villages. A number of the locals are campaigning against this, not surprisingly, and have enlisted the support of Hugh Johnson, among others.


Apparently, the bridge and motorway are being built to bring traffic in from Hahn, Ryanair's airport which is nowhere near Frankfurt, and it is claimed that it is seriously threatening their integrity and interfering with [...] drainage" of these and their vineyards in Wehlen, Graach and Zeltingen.

Now, I have to say I'm not entirely sure how these last three will be that adversely affected as the motorway runs along the crest of the hills behind them, beyond the fairly decent forest which lies atop the hills. But, looking at the plans the bridge, with numerous supporting stilts, runs right through the vineyards of the first three named villages and can be expected to have some effect there.

If you want to register your protest then contact Sarah Washington (washsarah@gmail.com) as she is leading the protests in situ in the Mosel.

One way or the other, this bridge seems to make no great sense - this part of Germany is beautiful and, generally, very quiet. I can understand the desire to bring more people here (all governments face a choice between improving local economies by bringing in more tourists yet, thereby, destroying the attraction) but this seems madness to me. What is not clear from the maps is where this new motorway ends - it appears to head towards Brussels but I'm not sure, and there would be no great need for a motorway for that traffic. Even sillier is that, at a time when we're challenged by climate change, bringing more emissions through greater traffic densities just seems bizarre.

Anyway, have a look at the video and maps and make up your own minds.