They brought it upon themselves. This is being pushed by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Party of Deutschland (SPD), which were confirmed another legislature period of 5 years in April with 64% voter participation.

Decisions are made by those who show up. Now they'll have to live with these idiots in parliament until 2026. I feel for them, but if ~40% of voters can't be bothered to show up to the urns, you have a large part to play in the reason for this even being possible.

Rave against the machine!

To put it into perspective for the British readers. Imagine the London orbital was lacking a bit, e.g. no M25 between Oxted and Merstham, and all the traffic would go through local roads.

The highway would bring extreme noise and pollution to the city.

On the contrary. Closing the ring Autobahn gap would very much reduce the traffic - especially the stop-and-go traffic on local roads. The new piece of Autobahn would be forced to be very low on noise, as Germany already has insane requirements on sound insulation for new and renovated roads - there was a news item recently that they had to erect a sound isolating barrier on a German road to protect a cemetry from the noise. As if the inhabitants would complain.