The Left party has sharply criticized the concept spearheaded by Transport Minister Steffen Bilger (CDU), which suggests temporarily lifting the Sunday driving ban for trucks due to low water levels in German rivers. Jorrit Bosch, the transport policy spokesman for the Left faction in the Bundestag, told the news portal T-Online that the low water status serves merely as a pretext to gradually erode and dismantle the Sunday driving ban. He accused Bilger, stating that the Union has sought to relax this protective rule for years and is now instrumentalizing the climate crisis to achieve that goal.
Bosch insists that goods that cannot be transported by ship because of the low water should be transferred to rail, not to the road. He argues that replacing a single vessel with dozens of heavy goods vehicles would result in more traffic congestion, increased noise, higher carbon dioxide emissions, and greater stress on local residents. According to him, the persistent low water levels should be seen as a warning sign from the climate crisis.
Bosch maintains that the response to this warning cannot be to dispatch even more trucks onto the streets. Instead of resorting to hurried exemption rules, he demands massive investments in a climate-resilient infrastructure and a consistent, comprehensive expansion of the rail network.
