The construction site for the second S-Bahn main line in the eastern section only recently made headlines: In April, unknown persons set fire to construction machinery not far from the Bavarian State Parliament. Now Deutsche Bahn (DB) has announced the official start of construction for this final section of the project.
The planning approval decision, i.e. the building permit, has been available since December 2023. Tenders and awards for the trades, services and construction work in this section are currently underway. In the Maximiliansanlagen south of the Maximilianeum, preparations for the “rescue shaft 7” and the underground branch structure for the tunnels in the direction of Giesing are almost completed, according to the DB. In order for the actual work to begin, several supply lines and canals had to be rerouted.
Work is now also underway on the railway site at the southern end of Orleansstrasse. “Rescue shaft 8” is being built here. The site is currently being rebuilt to make space for the second main route. The car dealer left the property a long time ago. “Rescue shaft 9” is being built at the northern end of Orleansstrasse. There, too, the construction site is now being “cleared,” as the DB puts it.
According to DB, preparations are already being made for the common signal box technology on the first and second main routes. This concerns the construction of cable troughs and the laying of new signal cables from the Ostbahnhof to the Südbahnhof in the Thalkirchner Straße area. This work mainly takes place at night and on weekends. In the nights from December 9th to 13th, underground cable engineering work will be carried out there. This affects the area of Balanstrasse and Tassiloplatz.
According to initial forecasts, the second main route should not be completed until 2026, then 2028 and, according to current status, probably not until 2037. The DB does not cite misjudgments from the start as the reason, but rather numerous replannings. For example, the Ostbahnhof station for the second main line will be relocated from Orleansplatz to the Werksviertel side. There is also a new concept with a central rescue tunnel. The earlier plan, which was also approved at the time, with a rescue shaft on Kellerstrasse and the station under Orleansplatz was rejected.
Officially, according to the latest estimate, the route should cost 7.2 billion euros, instead of 3.2 to 3.84 billion as initially estimated. However, other estimates assume twice the amount, i.e. around 14 billion euros. The main route would therefore be more expensive than the equally controversial Stuttgart 21 project, which will cost more than eleven billion euros. For this price, for example, you would get almost 38 million first-class train tickets from Munich to Berlin.