Munich (dpa/lby) – According to information from Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Federal Court of Auditors already criticized the construction of the second S-Bahn trunk line in Munich in 2018 as not being eligible for federal funding. The estimated costs were so high that the cost-benefit factor no longer met the funding criteria, according to a paper by the Court of Auditors, which is available to Bayerischer Rundfunk – even though the costs at the time were less than three billion euros were calculated today.
“The cost-benefit analysis resulted in a cost-benefit ratio of 1.05. The Federal Court of Auditors does not consider it viable because not all relevant aspects were included in the investigation (…). The Federal Court of Auditors has doubts about the profitability of the project”, the BR quotes from the Court of Auditors paper.
A cost-benefit factor of more than 1 is considered favorable and therefore eligible for funding. However, not all costs were taken into account in the planning. For example, expenses for maintenance were not included in the planning.
The whole construction project was then estimated at 3.2 billion euros, plus the risk costs, a kind of safety buffer – that’s how the sum of 3.85 billion euros came to be. The Federal Court of Auditors criticized this as too low, because a large part of the risk costs had not even been taken into account: “It is incompatible with a proper economic analysis to completely ignore the majority of the risk costs of 600 million euros,” the BR quoted.
