APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R00020011022-9
Most highway transportation facilities for passenger and freight are owned and operated by an agency of the Ministry for Transport. Some industrial complexes provide their own transportation, and a few privately owned enterprises still exist. In recent years a number of motor-transport combines have developed out of the merger of various motor-transport enterprise, these combines are now operating in the districts of Cottbus, Erfurt, Frankfurt, Gera, Halle, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Magdeburg, Neubrandenburg, Potsdam, and Rostock.
The role of highways in the expansion of container service to the most important industrial centers is linked with opening ever-larger collecting and distributing areas served by container transfer points. This has necessitated procurement of special pickup-delivery trailer units. Container delivery and collection is accomplished in many cases by motor vehicles (Figure 3) operating within a radius of about 25 miles of the container transfer point.
In 1971 highway transport carried 545 million short tons of freight and produced 8.9 million short-ton-miles. Normally highway traffic volume peaks each year in late August when the heaviest demands for truck transport occur. In addition to transporting daily supplies for the population, all sectors of the economy have to be provided with adequate stocks prior to the beginning of winter. Furthermore, additional export goods are transported as industry drives to meet government-established quotas prior to the end of the year.
Weather conditions influencing traffic include fog (especially in autumn), ice, and snowdrifts up to 20 feet deep in the southern hills. Spring flooding in marshy areas of the north is common. Bottlenecks further restrict traffic and include narrow roads (many of which have high crowns), underpasses, steep grades and sharp curves, and sharp turns in towns and villages.
In 1971 there were 1,529,000 vehicles registered in East Germany (1,267,600 automobiles, 244,000 trucks, and 17,200 buses). Medium trucks and automobiles are produced domestically, but larger trucks, including semitrailers, and buses are imported from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the U.S.S.R. Some automobiles are imported from Czechoslovakia and the U.S.S.R. A large share of the automobile inventory consists of government-owned cars used primarily for business and official purposes. Most of the privately owned cars belong to the professional and governmental elite.
East Germany produces more than 150,000 cars a year, which is more than one-third of the total Eastern European automobile production.
The Trabant plant at Zwickau, the second largest automobile factory in Eastern Europe, produces more than 80,000 cars a year. Another factory, the Wartburg plant at Eisenach, is also one of the larger plants in Europe and process about 40,000 cars a year.
East Germany does not have an adequate number of filling stations and repair shops, and chronic shortages of spare parts keep many vehicles out of service for long periods. Moreover, state-owned vehicles always take precedence at service facilities, requiring private cars to wait much longer.
Highway improvement is planned and accomplished within the framework of overall economic development programs. There have been several improvement plans since 1950, but because of poor planning and insufficient funds the few plans that were started have only been partially completed. Only recently, because of greater emphasis on development rather than on politics, has highway-transportation policy become better defined and coordinated. Improvements consist mainly of widening, resurfacing, and reconstructing road surfaces and bases; increasing bridge load capacities and widths; replacing outdated grade crossings with underpasses or bridges, and realigning sharp curves. Among its more important projects, the current highway development program (1965-71) includes an extension of the autobahn system. Autobahn sections under construction or projected are the following: Berlin Circumferential Highway (northern ring), Berlin-Rostock, Halle-Magdeburg, and Dresden-Bad Schandau-Czechoslovakia border. In addition, some reconstruction or improvement is in progress on nearly all primary routes.
Construction and maintenance of the highway system suffers from a lack of construction materials, which are generally of inferior quality. Furthermore, there has been a lack of proper construction machines, spare equipment parts, suitable manpower, and sufficient funds. Consequently, projects are seldom completed in the stated timeframe. Construction and maintenance operations are further complicated by wet or marshy terrain in the northern lake country, by densely forested hills in the south and southwest, and, countryside, by inadequate base courses, which result in widespread surface deterioration.
As with the railroads, local work groups, students, and military and prison crews are employed in various repair projects to keep up with the road maintenance program. However, construction of the Leipzig-Dresden autobahn (since completed) and preparation for constructing the Berlin-Rostock autobahn, which is
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R00020011022-9
