2010: The graduation trip of 57 students and six teachers from Ludwigshafen ends abruptly on Dachauer Strasse in Munich. The driver of your coach misjudged the height of the underpass in Moosach, the bus got stuck in the tube, and 13 injured students had to go to the hospital. In 2011 and 2012, trucks crashed in the same place, and in 2013 a four-meter high double-decker bus with 55 mostly young passengers rammed into the underpass: 40 were injured. In the summer of 2014, a concrete mixer almost four meters high damaged the tube so badly that it had to be closed to traffic for days.
These are just a few examples of accidents that have occurred at the underpass in the north-west of the city, which is only 3.70 meters high. Vehicles with a maximum height of 3.40 meters are allowed to pass through. Not only people were injured: The underpass, built in 1907 and renovated twice since then (most recently in 1972) and repaired several times, is now so damaged that it now has to be completely renewed. This will lead to massive restrictions in rail and road traffic.
The construction period will take a total of 30 months. Dachauer Strasse will therefore be closed to car traffic for a full three years in the vicinity of the underpass. Pedestrian and bicycle traffic will only remain blocked for a short time and will be diverted via the Moosach S-Bahn station and Jakob-Hagenbucher-Strasse. Motorists who otherwise use the highly frequented north-south connection via Dachauer Strasse then have to accept further detours. Motor vehicle traffic will be diverted extensively via Max-Born-Strasse, Triebstrasse and Georg-Brauchle-Ring.
Deutsche Bahn has not yet been able to say exactly when construction will begin, how long the route will be closed to trains and how rail traffic will then be regulated. One thing is certain: construction will not start before 2024, the S-Bahn line S1 to Freising, regional traffic in the direction of Landshut and Regensburg and freight traffic will be affected by the road closure.
In the future, the height should be 4.70 meters – that’s enough for double-decker buses
Last year, the plans for the renewal were again publicly available after they had been changed again. The Federal Railway Authority has now passed the plan approval decision, i.e. granted the building permit. Because the height of the tracks cannot be changed, the plan envisages, among other things, that the road will be lowered so that the clear height will be 4.70 meters in the future and double-decker buses should no longer cause any problems: they are usually around four Meter high. A possible tram in the direction of Dachau should also fit through the new tube. However, the lowering of the road entails a certain amount of work: the road must be routed in a groundwater basin because of its future depth.
The underpass should also be wider. For cyclists and pedestrians, there is a separate pavement and roadway 4.75 meters wide. A 5.25 meter wide two-way cycle path is planned on the south-west side. The so-called clear width of the lane is 10.25 meters. Dachauer Strasse is being redesigned between the intersections of Gröbenzeller Strasse on one side and Moosburger Strasse on the other, as well as Breslauer and Riesengebirgstrasse. Out of town, the left-turn lane will be extended in the direction of Gröbenzeller Strasse and will extend through the tunnel.
After the repeated accidents at the underpass, the city had an electronic height control installed on the bridge in 2017. This triggers an alarm as soon as a vehicle approaches that exceeds the permitted passage height of 3.40 meters. However, according to the police, trucks continued to get stuck in the underpass because they ignored the signals.