Court restores approvals for Ebenfurth rail link

Austria’s Administrative Court has reinstated approvals for the Ebenfurth rail link, overturning a ruling that had cancelled them. The court said the Federal Administrative Court had wrongly interpreted the meaning of the overall project, ORF reported on Wednesday.

The appeals against the approvals are now pending again before the Federal Administrative Court. Because they have no suspensive effect, construction could proceed.

The Federal Administrative Court had cancelled approvals for the Pottendorfer Line railway and the Ebenfurth link, which had been granted by the Environment Ministry and the governments of Burgenland and Lower Austria. It argued that the authorities were responsible for high-performance rail projects such as the Pottendorfer Line upgrade, but not for the Ebenfurth link, which it considered separate from the overall project.

The Administrative Court ruled that the overall project must be interpreted broadly. It said the project includes all measures with a spatial and substantive connection that are required by the high-performance rail project. In this case, that includes the Ebenfurth link. The court therefore upheld appeals by the Infrastructure Ministry, the two state governments and Austrian Federal Railways.

The link is intended to save commuters 11 minutes in each direction, or 22 minutes a day. At present, there is no rail connection between Vienna and Eisenstadt without a wait, and work on a solution has been under way for decades.