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Koralm Railway

infrastruktur.oebb.at

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Re: Koralm Railway

#41

Post by tasuki »

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.

What are the funding billboards for, anyway? They're an eyesore, and it's all paid by us EU taxpayers anyway. They should say "financed by you", or better yet, not exist to begin with.

Re: Koralm Railway

#42

Post by jfoster »

fzeindl wrote: post #15
franciscop wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I'm just pointing out that this article doesn't follow the HN Guidelines, so I was confused at not seeing any mention of the budget within the article: > "Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important." > "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misl…

Agreed, it was just important to me to point it out, since staying within such a massive budget on such a long timeline is a rare achievement.

You're using a strange definition of "within". It's 7% over.

Re: Koralm Railway

#43

Post by manarth »

monster_truck wrote: post #29
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!

The Koralm tunnel has a different temperature gradient, as the depth is a consequence of a mountain on top of the tunnel, rather than an increased proximity to the earth crust/core.

    > "The undisturbed rock temperature varies from 10 °C, in tunnel sections close to the portals, to 32 °C in the tunnel centre"
32°C is still a significant engineering concern, but not as consequential as 45–50°C.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088677982...

Re: Koralm Railway

#44

Post by buybackoff »

Just yesterday B1M published an interesting video about the future longest tunnel between Lyon, France and Turin, Italy. It will be more than 50km, deeply below the Alps. The project has finally secured funding, from both countries and EU, and is on track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFrr-L_BcC4

Re: Koralm Railway

#45

Post by hopelite »

fzeindl wrote: post #6
franciscop wrote: post #4

This headline is a bit odd and doesn't represent the original title nor article content. What does "within budget" mean here? That it costed what the original budget set out to cost? Couldn't find anything related to the budget within the article.

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.

Started in 1998, apparently without a budget, which came 7 years later, and was completed within…mostly…budget, but not really since it was 7% over budget.

Which also begs the question; why is a railway project page on HN at all, regardless of anything else?

Re: Koralm Railway

#46

Post by zzbn00 »

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.

Would be interesting to read how the Austrian project was contracted out? It seems in the UK the big construction companies have got very good in extracting a lot of money from customers, wonder if things were different in Austria with this project.

Re: Koralm Railway

#47

Post by tremon »

jfoster wrote: post #42
fzeindl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it was just important to me to point it out, since staying within such a massive budget on such a long timeline is a rare achievement.

You're using a strange definition of "within". It's 7% over.

€5.5 billion in 2005 is €8 billion in 2025, so it can be either over or under budget depending on how you amortize the costs over the construction period.

Re: Koralm Railway

#48

Post by fzeindl »

jfoster wrote: post #42
fzeindl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it was just important to me to point it out, since staying within such a massive budget on such a long timeline is a rare achievement.

You're using a strange definition of "within". It's 7% over.

In a world where large infrastructure projects regularly exceed their budget by 100-1000%, 7% is huge.

It is important to show people that that is possible in government projects.

If you find a more concise way of saying „with unusually small overrun of it‘s budget“ tell me.

Also there were sections added after the initial estimate.

Re: Koralm Railway

#49

Post by deaux »

georgefrowny wrote: post #37
cjrp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this seems to have less than 80 structures (overpasses, bridges, underpasses etc.) whereas HS2 has 175 bridges and 52 viaducts. Doesn't tunnel beat any of those structures in terms of cost/complexity?

Not necessarily because no one lives underground and there are probably no existing things like property, gas lines, electricity lines, sewers, pipelines, roads, etc to avoid or reroute. And very little in the way of habitat. The longest road tunnel in the world only cost about 100 million in the 90s for 25km so tunneling isn't always a gigantic Big Dig style clusterfuck. In terms of legal complexity, it's fantastica…

> The longest road tunnel in the world only cost about 100 million in the 90s for 25km so tunneling isn't always a gigantic Big Dig style clusterfuck.

Big Dig style clusterfuck is because the simplicity and cheapness you're talking about only apply to tunnels through mountains, less so to those underwater and definitely not to tunnels under big cities i.e. land that people live on, which comes with all the complexity.

Re: Koralm Railway

#50

Post by syberspace »

tasuki wrote: post #39

> Crossing the Koralpe massif more quickly and with more comfort. That’s what the future of train travel from Graz to Klagenfurt looks like. With the Koralm Railway, you will arrive at your destination even quicker. The fastest connection will shrink from three hours to just 45 minutes. There aren't any big mountains between Graz and Klagenfurt. It's an hour on the Autobahn. That it took three hours by train... well,…

There is, the Koralpe massif. Previously to get to Klagenfurt from Graz you first had to go north through a somewhat tight valley for about 50km before the train would turn to the south-west towards Klagenfurt, again tough alpine valleys, and with a lot of stops inbetween. The new route goes south/south-west immediatley, is very straight compared to the old route, and has at most 3 stops.
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