Overview

• The tunnel has been shut for several hours on consecutive mornings since Monday, with Wednesday’s reopening only in mid-morning after the early shift went unstaffed.
• Traffic senator Ute Bonde said periodic closures are likely through the end of the week as the administration works on short-term fixes.
• Only three of the six required monitoring posts are fully trained, two employees are in training, and recruitment for a sixth is underway.
• The immediate trigger this week was that all three city staff assigned to the early shift reported sick, leaving the monitoring room without personnel.
• Public transport and traffic were disrupted, with BVG suspending the M85 between Hauptbahnhof and Potsdamer Platz and rerouting the M41, on a corridor used by roughly 50,000 vehicles daily; officials are weighing reassignments or external providers, and say AI cannot replace human oversight.