Maiden voyage: The Lichtwiesenbahn has reached its destination – despite strong resistance from local residents who wanted to prevent the transport project.
Image: Helmut Fricke
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A lost bet couldn’t spoil the good mood at the ceremony for the commissioning of the Lichtwiesenbahn: everyone involved had waited far too long for the 28 million euro expansion project to finally be completed.
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Darmstadt ⋅ To celebrate the day, the official opening of the Lichtwiesenbahn, almost without exception speakers stepped up to the microphone in Darmstadt on Monday, for whom the long-controversial major project had even brought criminal charges. The Hessian Transport Minister Tarek Al-Wazir (Die Grünen), like his two party friends, Darmstadt’s Lord Mayor Jochen Partsch and Head of the Mobility Department Michael Kolmer, was at times accused of frivolously wasting public money with the extension of the route to the Lichtwiese campus of the Technical University . At least that’s what the critics argued. The fact that all three politicians – as well as the managing director of Heag mobilo GmbH, Michael Dirmeier, who was also reported by citizens – was unmistakably happy at the ceremony at the new terminus must have had two reasons: on the one hand, according to Partsch, all criminal charges have long been dropped, on the other hand, they have spoken out almost everyone involved was enthusiastic about the maiden voyage.
