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Koralm Railway

infrastruktur.oebb.at

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Re: Koralm Railway

#81

Post by bluGill »

kaon_2 wrote: post #33
nasmorn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not strange at all! If you want to go by car you must build even more tunnels. Mountainous regions favor rail just like urban areas do. Furthermore, 19th century investments into rail still pay off in mountainous regions, because once you build a railway bridge or tunnel, you are kind of dumb not to use it. In the USA competition from trucks or cars is much tougher.

Note the US has the number one freight rail system in the world by most measures (there are lots of ways to measure this depending on how you want to abuse the statistics). Some of this is Europe has better river routes to work with (I don't know Asia), but some of this is Europe has focused more on passengers to the point where freight is unable to get through forcing trucks.

Re: Koralm Railway

#82

Post by sweezyjeezy »

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!

It's also really hard to make the tunnel remain a tunnel over its expected 150 year lifespan - given that it basically runs through a fault line. They had to study and test local geology for about 15 years, build certain sections to expect some movement over time, as well as kit everything out with a lot of sensors.

Overall an amazing achievement, and unsurprising it took this long to figure out!

Re: Koralm Railway

#83

Post by DeathArrow »

preisschild wrote: post #52
tasuki wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I (pro-EU Austrian) think they are great, as they show that we also get huge benefits through our EU membership and that we can do such enormous megaprojects only together Also, eyesore? What do you have against the EU flag?

Austria is probably giving EU more money than it receives, so how is that going to help?

Re: Koralm Railway

#85

Post by iso1631 »

stephen_g wrote: post #26
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.

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,…

HS2 also includes major stations - a 6 platform one almost entirely underground in west london, a multi-platform extension in central london, a new station in central birmingham, a new 4 platform outside of Birmingham

Re: Koralm Railway

#87

Post by MattRix »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #80
dachris wrote: post #78

Its sister tunnel - the Semmering Base Tunnel [0] - is scheduled to be completed in 2030. These two combined greatly reduce the travel time from Vienna to Graz and Klagenfurt (combined 1h 15m time saving). You don't hear that much about great engineering projects today, yet it's still an incredible feat to build those. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Base_Tunnel

> You don't hear that much about great engineering projects today Here's a great engineering project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_test_tunnel

is it though?

Re: Koralm Railway

#88

Post by groestl »

Booked a trip yesterday, without knowing this has happened. ~1h off my usual trip time, which I got accustomed to in the last two decades. It's extremely awesome!

Re: Koralm Railway

#90

Post by showerst »

alberto_ol wrote: post #84

English is not my language, is the headline grammatically correct?

It's a little awkward, but what it's trying to communicate doesn't really work well in one sentence.

As a native US English speaker, I would probably write something like "Austria opens the world's sixth longest railway tunnel: 27 year long project arrives on schedule and under budget."

That's a long headline, though.

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