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Koralm Railway

infrastruktur.oebb.at

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Re: Koralm Railway

#61

Post by georgefrowny »

deaux wrote: post #49
georgefrowny wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 complexit…

Yes, and the Austrian route is mostly in that category under the Koralpe Massif rather then the very politically awkward Home Counties (NIMBY Central, and very rich NIMBYs at that).

Hence why tunneling does not necessarily mean a stunningly expensive project. We just hear about the HS2s and Big Digs because they reverberate for decades with all the legal battles.

Re: Koralm Railway

#62

Post by orthoxerox »

oniony wrote: post #24
monster_truck wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like you might want to build the whole HS2 underground to save money.

Re: Koralm Railway

#63

Post by tremon »

tasuki wrote: post #41
brnt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it's all paid by us EU taxpayers anyway

That's simply not true, the EU subsidy budget is dwarfed by each country's national budget. From https://eubudget.europarl.europa.eu/en/how-it-works/ :

The EU budget [..] accounts annually for around 1% of the EU's GNI (gross national income), or around €160-180 billion. National public spending by EU countries averages nearly 50% of their respective GNI.

Re: Koralm Railway

#64

Post by csomar »

nasmorn wrote: post #25
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.

Here is a huge/difficult island with only 55K that has tons of tunnels: https://maps.app.goo.gl/abcnXtRNs9QdVkhC8

Population size, density, terrain, etc. have nothing to do with it.

Re: Koralm Railway

#65

Post by throwaway2037 »

epolanski wrote: post #27
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...

This is interesting analysis. Many good points. Regarding this comment: "first mega city on the planet": As I understand, in the modern era, Beijing was the first city in the world to have one million people.

Re: Koralm Railway

#66

Post by MangoToupe »

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…

> Big Dig style clusterfuck.

The big dig is probably the last major success of American infrastructure. Referring to it as a clusterfuck is representative of why we'll never get another one.

Re: Koralm Railway

#67

Post by b112 »

tchalla wrote: post #59
franciscop wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I opened the article expecting to see news about the budget and how they stayed within it, since that SEEMS like the biggest surprising news in a project like this. How is that overly pedantic?

I understand your expectation. That said, I think it's ok to add detail in commentary when the article doesn't mention it explicitly. So continuing to go upon the point that the article didn't mention the budget makes you seem as pedantic. There are non-English articles on the budget too. https://orf.at/stories/3414173/

Their point was completely valid. HN policies are what help keep this place sane.

Re: Koralm Railway

#68

Post by throwaway2037 »

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!

Good point about "boring vs blasting". I didn't think about that. I remember reading about the longest tunnel in Japan between Honshu and Hokkaido (Seikan Tunnel). I recall that it was entirely hand drilled due to unusual soil conditions. I wonder if that would still be true today with state of the art tunnel boring machines.

   > Being two separate tunnels, it also needs twice as much excavation work.
Yet another great point. At some of the Toei Oedo stations, you can see a miniature model of the weird overlapping twin tunnel boring machines. So, in theory it is two tunnels, but in practice, it was dug as a single, weird overlapping twin tunnel.

Re: Koralm Railway

#69

Post by pestatije »

fzeindl wrote: post #48
jfoster wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"almost" is the word

Re: Koralm Railway

#70

Post by throwaway2037 »

e12e wrote: post #40
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…

I'm guessing geology play a big part - Japan is mostly "new" rock, Alps mostly "old".

Sorry, I don't understand your point. Why is Japan considered "new" and European Alps considered "old"?
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