Time to ditch the autobahn?

Photo by Patrick Federi on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

An interesting debate is raging behind the scenes in the German government at the moment. While on the surface the subject is banal - how much money to invest in asphalt - it actually tells us a lot about two strands of thinking clashing at the top of German government.

On the one hand you have the ideology of ‘choice is good’ represented by the liberal Free Democrats. They control the Transport Ministry and are pushing for a multi-billion euro investment in modernising and extending the country’s autobahn system.

Their logic goes something like this. The more disposable income that Germans have had over the decades, the more that they have decided to spend it on owning their own car. Put simply, a car gives people more choice: they can travel further to shop, they can travel further to work, and they can travel further to visit friends and go on holiday. All good things.

According to the Free Democrats, government’s primary aim is to respon…