What do the third runway of the Vienna International Airport, the 380 kV power ring line and the Semmering tunnel have in common? Correct answer: in all three cases highly controversial discussions led major delays in project implementation, sometimes for decades, and to a steep rise in project costs.
On 1 September Senior Scientist Peter Biegelbauer from the AIT Center for Innovation Systems and Policy gave a keynote speech at the TU Braunschweig with the title “Infrastructure Projects in Austria: Everyone against Everyone”. The presentation was part of a conference on the escalation of conflicts over large infrastructure projects. Research findings from Germany were confronted with perspectives from Denmark, Switzerland and Austria, displaying a broad range of strategies regarding the way in which such conflicts are handled. By way of comparison good practices were found especially in Denmark.