Lucerne: City Council rejects Spange Nord
The Lucerne City Council does not agree with the optimized preliminary project for the Spange Nord because it fears negative effects on the quality of life and the cityscape.
The Spange Nord is a planned main traffic axis from Schlossberg to Fluhmühle, with which the northern part of the city of Lucerne is to be connected to the national road network at the Lochhof junction. In this way, the city center is to be relieved of motorized individual traffic and new space is to be created for public transport and non-motorized traffic. The Northern Bypass is a sub-project of the overall Lucerne Bypass system.
In a statement dated January 24, the Lucerne City Council now states that it cannot approve the optimized preliminary project of the northern ring road in its present form. In the view of the city council, the main traffic axis with three to four lanes for the most part will bring a high traffic load and thus strong noise emissions for the neighborhoods from Zürichstrasse over Schlossberg and Friedental to Reussmatt and Fluhmühle. This not only limits the quality of life in an area where, for example, the cantonal hospital or the cemetery are located, but also makes construction developments more difficult and more expensive, according to the city council.
City council: plan bypass without northern bypass
The project also affects the goals of the city's energy, climate and air pollution control policies and does not sufficiently support the goal of promoting environmentally friendly and space-efficient modes of transport. The situation for pedestrians and cyclists would even worsen in many places compared to the current situation due to waiting times and shared spaces, the statement continues.
In the event that no city-compatible solution is found, the City Council calls for planning of the bypass project without the Lochhof connection and thus without the Northern Bypass.
A new highway tunnel between Ibach and Kriens and the northern bypass will relieve the existing highway and the city center of traffic from 2035. The federal government and the canton have drawn up a preliminary project for the entire bypass system. Based on the feedback received from the 2014 consultation, the canton of Lucerne revised the preliminary project for the Northern Bypass and again invited the municipalities and associations to submit comments at the end of 2016.
