A bridge collapse served as a wake-up call for Germany that it's pushed off investment in infrastructure for too long. But experts say cutting bureaucracy needs to come before spending billions on fresh investment.
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00:00A clear September morning in 2024. It's almost 3 a.m. as Dresden's Karola Bridge collapses into the Elbe River.
00:09The ruins of the bridge quickly became a symbol for what plagues Germany.
00:13Pent-up investment, especially in public infrastructure.
00:17For decades, bridges weren't kept up. Now many of them are crumbling.
00:22When it comes to bridges, we have not kept up with investment over the past 30 years.
00:28We're seeing the results of this every day.
00:31And the problems with Germany's rail service, we're also seeing it with regards to roads and highways.
00:37Lack of investment has been a problem for all infrastructure, for public buildings and for all traffic.
00:47The likely new governing coalition wants to improve the situation, investing the gigantic amount of 500 billion euros.
00:56Both the conservative CDU and the Social Democrats have voted for the package.
01:01Critics, however, say that money alone won't fix the problem. Time is also of the essence.
01:07The coalition papers don't have a single paragraph on how to speed up planning and the approval process.
01:15It's not acceptable that it takes five or ten years to get a permit to build a new road.
01:22The whole thing only makes sense if we can spend this money fast.
01:26And for that, we have to cut down on bureaucracy.
01:34Before any infrastructure project is started in Germany, a dizzying amount of agencies and regulators are involved.
01:42Including NGOs and even private citizens can oppose or demand major changes to any plan.
01:49And with regards to technical norms and specifications, even the tiniest detail is looked at by bureaucrats.
01:56No wonder that construction companies meeting at the German Road and Transport Congress in Bonn
02:01see the country's massive bureaucracy as the sector's biggest problem.
02:05Not least when it comes to the use of new technologies.
02:11We have to risk working with methods that have only been tested for 80 percent.
02:16We are currently losing too much time to prolonged testing and we're simply not fast enough.
02:21We have to get faster.
02:25With regards to planning, approval and procurement,
02:28Germany has been moving much slower than most European countries for a long time.
02:33Things did go faster in Dresden.
02:36Permits to dismantle the collapsed bridge came fast as the ruins posed a threat to traffic and shipping.
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