You have to celebrate the festivals as they come. Although the renovation of the Sendlinger Tor subway station is not yet completely completed, the municipal utilities and the Munich transport company inaugurated the mezzanine on Tuesday – with music, snacks and a whole bunch of invited guests.
The new look with the black ceilings and the lighting concept by Ingo Maurer is very modern. The design for the renovation came from the Raupach and Bohn planning community.
Almost seven years have passed since construction work began. But now construction fences, hanging cables, construction noise and dust on the barrier floor are a thing of the past. With the opening of most of the shops, life has now returned. There are now two tobacco shops (one with magazines), two bakeries and a pretzel shop, two cell phone shops, a drugstore, a kebab stand, a locksmith, a shop with oat specialties and a flower shop.
The subway station should be completely finished by mid-2024. Until then, there will be work on the ceilings and facades as well as on the new entrance to Blumenstrasse. The escalators have already been installed there and are among the longest in Munich’s local transport system. Passengers can therefore reach the surface directly from the platform level of the U1 and U2.
One of the most important transport hubs in Munich
The station, which opened in 1971 and was expanded in 1980, is one of Munich’s most important transport hubs. Four subway lines plus two amplifier lines operate there. Five tram lines and two bus lines stop on the surface. Up to 200,000 passengers get on and off the subway every day. The station was originally designed for only around 50,000 passengers, which is why the underground space became increasingly crowded over time. According to MVG, the crowding on the platforms also had an impact on the punctuality of the subway trains, as their processing was delayed. Now people have a lot more space. With new paths, exits and new stairs, passenger flows will be distributed more efficiently.
Also new are the elevators from the U1/U2 level to the surface, which is also being redesigned but is not quite finished yet. For example, the free-running right-turn lane from Oberanger to Sonnenstrasse no longer exists, and the left-turn lane to Blumenstrasse also had to go so that cyclists have more space. From now on there will be structural, wide cycle paths instead of the old cycle lanes integrated into the road. In front of the Sendlinger Tor there is now a new floor covering made of sand-colored mastic asphalt, and concrete seating areas have been created around the trees.
Mayor Dieter Reiter (left) confessed that he had a slight “buzzer phobia”, here with MVG boss Ingo Wortmann at the opening of the modernized mezzanine.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
At the opening ceremony, Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) and MVG boss Ingo Wortmann pressed a symbolic buzzer together. The mayor previously remarked that he had a “buzzer phobia,” because the last time he pressed one was at the groundbreaking ceremony for the second S-Bahn main line. As is well known, their construction will take 14 years instead of the previously announced nine.
The delay at Sendlinger Tor seems rather small. Actually, the work on the subway station should have been completed a year ago. But due to various adversities – the corona pandemic, delivery difficulties, unexpected finds of concrete parts underground – the opening has been postponed by more than a year. The station has also become a little more expensive, instead of 150 million euros it costs 160 million. For Ingo Wortmann, as he said, this is a “very decent result” given the general price development in the construction sector.
Reiter and Wortmann will have something to look forward to again in the summer. Then the municipal utilities want to celebrate another really big inauguration party at Sendlinger Tor.