The end is under track 8. Until now. If you want to go to the other side of the Ostbahnhof, you have to go up the stairs and walk 100 meters north to the main underpass. But when everything is ready – in 2028, the Deutsche Bahn predicts – this dead end tunnel will be extended and lead directly from Orleansplatz to the new station on the second main S-Bahn line on Friedenstraße. From there it is a short hop along Grafinger Straße to the clubs in the Werksviertel and to the planned concert hall of the BR Symphony Orchestra. In addition, one and a half kilometers further out of town, an additional bridge will connect the districts of Haidhausen and Berg am Laim across the wide rail line: with this pedestrian and cyclist footbridge, Deutsche Bahn (DB) will open up the new Leuchtenbergring S-Bahn station. He gets three platforms with two tracks each, which should be accessible via bridge exits and elevators.
DB Netz AG informed residents about this on Monday evening. The online event was part of the public participation in Plan approval proceduren for the section between Isar and Leuchtenbergring. Because while in Laim, at the western end of the eleven-kilometer long second trunk line, and at Marienhof, a permit is still pending in the east. This is due to the fact that Deutsche Bahn practically started over there in 2019.
A third tunnel, which serves as an escape route, was integrated into the planning at the time, and the railway also relocated the tubes from the old buildings in the Franzosenviertel in the direction of Rosenheimer Straße. Both together make the particularly controversial rescue tunnel on the Milky Way superfluous. In addition, the Ostbahnhof station can now be built on Friedenstrasse, where a construction depth of 15 meters is sufficient. On the other hand, at Orleansplatz, the originally planned location, they would have had to dig 35 meters deep.
Deutsche Bahn insures: The houses will remain undamaged
The rescheduling has calmed the minds in Haidhausen noticeably, and the questions from the group of around 70 participants on Monday were shaped by the desire for information, not aggression or rejection. This was helped by the fact that Jörg Mader from DB Residential Communication and project manager Jörg-Rainer Müller denied the risk that the houses could be damaged during construction work at a depth of around 40 meters. “You won’t feel any of it because of the deep position of the tunnel,” said Müller. In any case, the tunnel boring machine is very low-vibration.
The project manager justified the fact that the “Spanish solution” at Marienplatz was not used at the Ostbahnhof, i.e. the separate boarding and disembarking of the trains with two outer platforms, was justified by the number of passengers and the location. The separation is not technically necessary, so a central platform will be built.
Of course, there are also problem areas on the new route: the popular Maximiliansanlagen, for example, where a rescue shaft is planned south of the Maximilianeum. Nine striking trees have to be felled for this. They will be replaced, as will the row of trees on Orleansstrasse, assured Johanna Siess. The railway project manager for the environment was unable to answer the question of what will become of the sports facilities there.
There are also problems with the tram: Line 21 from Berg am Laim to Stachus will be closed for 23 weeks due to the tunneling work. Because where the S-Bahn tube crosses Berg-am-Laim-Straße, the open-top construction method is used. “Not an optimal solution,” admits Müller. Perhaps the blocking time can be shortened with a temporary track oscillation, one is still checking. And the S-Bahn will also not run on many a weekend when construction work has started: Before the underpass to Friedenstraße is dug while operations are still running, auxiliary bridges must be built over the tracks.