of the Transport Minister to adopt the A3 route and, among other things, to include a station at Limburg. DB then consulted with the states and community groups over the details of the route. In North Rhine-Westphalia there was considerable debate over the location of the station to serve the Bonn area and on how to serve the Cologne-Bonn Airport. DB decided that the station would be built at Siegburg and that a separate, double line would connect Cologne and the high-speed line to the south with Cologne-Bonn airport for the S-Bahn and ICE traffic. In Rhineland-Palatinate, DB decided that a station would be built north of Montabaur only north of Limburg Sud, partly to serve Koblenz via the A48, and to reroute a local railway through it. In Hesse, DB decided to build the Limburg station south of the town at its current location on cost grounds, even though this prevented a connection to the Lahn valley line, which would have provided a connection to Koblenz and Gießen. Options for connections to Wiesbaden were examined in detail, including routing the line through its eastern outskirts. DB eventually agreed to a double-line spur to Wiesbaden along the A66. Options for connections to Frankfurt Airport, the line to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and to the Riedbahn (the line to Mannheim). It was decided that routing the line into the existing Frankfurt Airport station (now known as the regional train station) with two tracks and a track would not be adequate, even if expanded to four or five tracks. DB decided that a separate station across the A3 from the old station would be required and that the line would go on to connect to the Riedbahn both northbound (towards Frankfurt) and southbound (towards Mannheim). Planning Although the route as set out above was adopted under the federal railway development law on 15 November 1993, the last legal challenge to the project was not resolved until September 1998. In the meantime DB decided to reduce the minimum radius of curves to and increased the maximum super-elevation of the track to (to follow the A3 more closely), reduced the spacing between tracks from (to save space) and increased the area of tunnel cross-sections from (to allow higher speeds for converging trains). The route as finally designed was intended to allow trains to cover the distance between Cologne and Frankfurt in 58 minutes, although the current