The government provided official figures on felling these trees in a response to a parliamentary question submitted by CSV MP Martine Hansen. Minister for Mobility and Public Works Francois Bausch revealed that there are more than 100,000 such trees and that in the last year, the ministry authorised around 100 requests to fell trees on roads just outside of villages.
Around 300 trees were felled in 2019 due to these concerns around improving safety on rural roads. However, 35 requests were rejected.
The minister also revealed further measures taken to improve road safety. Over the last year, the authorities have installed new guard rails on 20 kilometres-worth of rural roads. Half of those guard rails are designed as protective guard rails in front of trees.
Bausch also specified that the old age of many of the trees has caused the distance between the tree and the road to be extremely small, thus making it impossible to install a guard rail between the two.
