Traffic: Preliminary decision for a billion-dollar railway tunnel project in Hamburg

traffic
Preliminary decision for billion dollar railway tunnel project in Hamburg

An important preliminary decision has been made for the billion-dollar project of a tunnel to relieve the Hamburg railway junction.

Deutsche Bahn, the federal government and the senate of the Hanseatic city have agreed to investigate the construction of an approximately six-kilometer-long S-Bahn tunnel from the main station to Altona. This was reported by the traffic authority in the traffic committee of the Hamburg Parliament.

The construction project with the cumbersome designation “connecting railway relief tunnel” is listed in the requirements plan for federal railways as having the highest priority. For the project alone, around 2.66 billion euros are estimated in the catalog of measures worth 40 billion euros.

According to Deutsche Bahn, 300 regional and long-distance trains and 900 S-Bahn trains run daily on the railway line between the chronically congested main station and Altona. Capacity for long-distance traffic is to be freed up on one of the busiest sections of the nationwide route by relocating the S-Bahn traffic underground.

The project is considered an important building block for the planned “Germany cycle” of the railways. It is intended to ensure that from 2030 trains will run every half hour between the largest cities and that connections will be better coordinated. Train passengers would benefit from this with significantly shorter travel times.

“The new tunnel is a central key for the German cycle at one of the most important railway junctions in Germany,” said Hamburg’s Transport Senator Anjes Tjarks (Greens). The railway and the city now want to conduct a feasibility study by early 2023 to explore how the project can be implemented in detail. A schedule for the construction and an exact route are not yet available.

dpa