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Koralm Railway

infrastruktur.oebb.at

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Re: Koralm Railway

#22

Post by wongarsu »

brnt wrote: post #12
saubeidl wrote: post #7

I know its a small nitpick, but I got unreasonably annoyed at the two "Financed by EU fund x" banners having different flag sizes, paddings, fonts etc. How is there no unifying design language for these?

Is there any design? It's just the flag and a title + subtitle. Also, the EU is the most efficient government in terms of overhead, and having seen some of it up close not wasting time or money on "unifying design languages" for every single funding billboard is very much EU style. Just copy-paste by some local authority in Powerpoint in most cases, I bet.

Looking at the modern iterations of the program guidelines for these programs, especially [1] and [2], you basically have to use the flag, the text over, under or to either side of the flag (your choice) in one of 6 fonts (Arial, Auto, Calibri, Garamond, Tahoma, Trebuchet, Ubuntu or Verdana), and have some rules for minimum distance, minimum size and proportionality. They absolutely could have made those two match visually. But each program offers premade banners that match the design criteria, and those don't always harmonize. As you say, nobody cared

1: https://hadea.ec.europa.eu/programmes/connecting-europe-faci...

2: https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/3192a0ef-6bda...

3: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/information-sources/log...

Re: Koralm Railway

#23

Post by monster_truck »

oniony wrote: post #16
fzeindl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is mostly within budget, estimated in 2005 were 5.5 billion €, total cost as of today are 5.9 billion €, the difference being largely attributed to the pandemic and later addition of sections.

To contrast, HS2 here in the UK has cost £40 billion (€45 billion) to date with a further £25 billion (€28 billion) allocated, for a largely superterranean route of 230km.

7x longer for 11x the cost seems pretty good all things considered.

Always thought it seemed like a waste to not also dig out a bunch of storage while we're down there. I'm sure there are good reasons we don't

Re: Koralm Railway

#24

Post by oniony »

monster_truck wrote: post #23
oniony wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To contrast, HS2 here in the UK has cost £40 billion (€45 billion) to date with a further £25 billion (€28 billion) allocated, for a largely superterranean route of 230km.

7x longer for 11x the cost seems pretty good all things considered. Always thought it seemed like a waste to not also dig out a bunch of storage while we're down there. I'm sure there are good reasons we don't

It's not seven times longer. The Austrian line is 130km with 50km of tunnels.

            Length  Tunnels  Bridges   Stations   Cost
    Koralm  130km   ~50km    100       12         €6b
       HS2  230km   ~75km    100+      4          €74b+
Obviously this does not give any indication of the complexity of each project. Tunnelling and building railway through a metropolis I would imagine is quite challenging.

Re: Koralm Railway

#25

Post by nasmorn »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #11

First, this is a massive accomplishment. When I looked at the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Railway ... it looks like a multi-multi-multi-phase project. Hats off to making this work. Second, I noticed how long it took to build this tunnel: Koralm Tunnel -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel It is 33km, and it took from 2008 to 2025 to build it. That is a damn long time! The Toei Oedo line i…

It is very strange that countries like Austria, Japan or Switzerland have some of the best rail systems in the world even though their bridge and tunnel requirements are huge. In the US building rail on any terrain seems to be more expensive than basically anything one can build in Austria.

Re: Koralm Railway

#26

Post by stephen_g »

oniony wrote: post #16
fzeindl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is mostly within budget, estimated in 2005 were 5.5 billion €, total cost as of today are 5.9 billion €, the difference being largely attributed to the pandemic and later addition of sections.

To contrast, HS2 here in the UK has cost £40 billion (€45 billion) to date with a further £25 billion (€28 billion) allocated, for a largely superterranean route of 230km.

As badly as HS2 has been run, apart from the tunnel length (where HS2 has not too much more than this project) these projects are night and day different. Not just that HS2 Phase 1a/1b is almost double the length and significantly higher design speed (360km/h vs 250km/h), but they are in a different league in terms of civil engineering from the info I can see - this seems to have less than 80 structures (overpasses, bridges, underpasses etc.) whereas HS2 has 175 bridges and 52 viaducts, and some of those are massive (including the longest railway viaduct in the UK).

Re: Koralm Railway

#27

Post by epolanski »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #11

First, this is a massive accomplishment. When I looked at the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Railway ... it looks like a multi-multi-multi-phase project. Hats off to making this work. Second, I noticed how long it took to build this tunnel: Koralm Tunnel -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel It is 33km, and it took from 2008 to 2025 to build it. That is a damn long time! The Toei Oedo line i…

Geography I guess[1].

Kanto is flat, it's the only region in Japan that could sustain feeding such a massive population and could allow building the first mega city on the planet.

Combine that with the massive engineering and rail experience Japanese have, and it's no surprise imho that combined with favorable geography they could build it quickly.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Topograp...

Re: Koralm Railway

#28

Post by IshKebab »

monster_truck wrote: post #23
oniony wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To contrast, HS2 here in the UK has cost £40 billion (€45 billion) to date with a further £25 billion (€28 billion) allocated, for a largely superterranean route of 230km.

7x longer for 11x the cost seems pretty good all things considered. Always thought it seemed like a waste to not also dig out a bunch of storage while we're down there. I'm sure there are good reasons we don't

Yeah because it would be extremely expensive and we don't need it.

Re: Koralm Railway

#29

Post by monster_truck »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #11

First, this is a massive accomplishment. When I looked at the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Railway ... it looks like a multi-multi-multi-phase project. Hats off to making this work. Second, I noticed how long it took to build this tunnel: Koralm Tunnel -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel It is 33km, and it took from 2008 to 2025 to build it. That is a damn long time! The Toei Oedo line i…

The rock they dug through for Koralm is, no hyperbole, about as bad as it gets. It's the gnarliest part of what's under the Alps and required them switching back and forth between boring and blasting.

Being two separate tunnels, it also needs twice as much excavation work. It's also ~25x deeper than Toei Oedo (4000ft vs 157ft). At 4000ft the rock itself is 45-50C!

Re: Koralm Railway

#30

Post by flowerthoughts »

Actually, the tunnel itself was only 17 years:

1998: Start of construction of the Koralm Railway

2008: Start of construction of the Koralm Tunnel

2018: Breakthrough Koralm Tunnel

2020: Final Koralm tunnel breakthrough

2025: This announcement (https://orf.at/stories/3414173/ in German)

https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...

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