which was immediately rejected. A route through Coburg that would have required the demolition of existing buildings was also considered. At first the use of the existing line south of Coburg with a new line commencing on its southern approach had been considered as the favoured option. The Thuringian Forest would have been crossed at its narrowest point, but there would have been no stop in Coburg. In a citizens’ initiative, Coburg citizens collected 13,000 signatures against the route. Spatial planning and route selection On 5 October 1992, the Board of Governors of the Bundesbahn and the Reichsbahn determined the route of the new line. The spatial planning procedure was launched on 20 October 1992. The Free State of Bavaria gave its opinion on the 1 March 1993. It confirmed the compatibility of two options with the goals of land planning. The essential requirements were an ICE stop in Coburg, the replacement of embankments by bridges in ecologically sensitive areas, the relocation of the planned over-taking station in Dorfles-Esbach to the south and the lowest possible crossing of the Main valley to the north of Ebensfeld. An option, which involved a route through Coburg, was abandoned in this context. In its opinion of 20 April 1993, the State of Thuringia sought, among others, an Interregio stop in the Ilmenau area, a shift of the line in the Gehren / Gräfinau-Angstedt area to the west, a western bypass of Molsdorf to protect the drinking water catchment area of Erfurt and the bundling of the route with the A 71 autobahn between Erfurt and Ilmenau. The planning approval procedure (as of mid-1994) would be carried out jointly in accordance with the railway law for both routes in this section. Between Ebensfeld and Erfurt, three different route options were investigated in a corridor that was approximately wide. The application documents for the line determination for the new line were submitted to the Federal Ministry of Transport in 1994 and the route was confirmed on 23 June 1994 (another source: May 1994) and the Federal Ministry of the Environment issued the decision. The new line crosses the Werra Railway (Werrabahn) at kilometre 38.0 on the new line. In the route selection, a connection of the new line with the Werra Railway between Grümpen and Rauenstein was considered. The cost of at least €150 million was considered to be too high, so the plans were