Frankfurt airport loop
The Frankfurt Airport S-Bahn is an approximately 15-kilometer, double-track and electrified main line that is served exclusively by the Frankfurt S-Bahn .
The line was built in two stages between 1968 and 1980 and has been used mainly by S-Bahn since then .
Traffic situation
The airport S-Bahn connects the S-Bahn network of the city of Frankfurt am Main starting from Frankfurt Central Station with Frankfurt Airport and Kelsterbach . The connecting line runs above ground except for the airport area, which is located in a tunnel.
The core of the route is a 2.2 kilometer long tunnel . In the double-track area, the width of the structure is 8.80 meters and the height above the top of the rails is 5.50 meters, the track center distance is 4.00 meters.
A later connection for an air freight center was originally planned.
Compared to the direct rail route from Frankfurt Stadion to Kelsterbach, the airport loop means a detour of 2.1 kilometers.
business
The S-Bahn line is used by the S-Bahn lines S8 and S9 and the regional express lines RMV line RE 2, 3 and 59. The S-Bahn runs every quarter of an hour to Wiesbaden Hauptbahnhof, alternating via Mainz Hauptbahnhof and Mainz-Kastel , and in the opposite direction to Hanau Hauptbahnhof via the underground station of Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof , the Frankfurt and Offenbach and Offenbach Ost city tunnels .
The regional express trains run every hour alternately in the direction of Koblenz Hauptbahnhof (via Mainz Hauptbahnhof and Bingen (Rhine) Hauptbahnhof ) or Saarbrücken Hauptbahnhof (via Mainz Hauptbahnhof and Idar-Oberstein ). In the opposite direction, the regional trains run to Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof . The RE 59 line runs every two hours via Frankfurt Süd - Frankfurt Ost - Maintal Ost - Hanau to Aschaffenburg.
history
background
According to information provided by the Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB) in 1969, the connection of Frankfurt am Main airport to the rail network was an old concern of DB. Due to a lack of funds and the slowly growing understanding of the necessity of the measure, however, the plan had not been able to take shape by then.
With the advent of jet aircraft between 1965 and 1970, the number of aircraft movements at Frankfurt Airport increased by 8 percent per year, while the number of passengers increased by an average of 19 percent per year. In 1971 the airport passed the 10 million passenger mark. For 1980, 24 million passengers were expected, in 1985 with 30 million. Forecasts expected that around 30 to 35 percent of passengers and employees would use the airport tram. At the peak hour, the sum of both directions, three to four thousand travelers were expected. The forecasts were revised downwards in 1972, and in 1979 17.5 million passengers were counted.
Planning and construction
The transport policy of the Federal Government in 1967 was, according to the Federal Railroad the decisive impetus for the planning and financing of the Frankfurt airport train. In June 1968 the Federal Railway Directorate in Frankfurt am Main received the planning order for the airport railway . A 7.5 km long new line with an approximately 1.5 km long tunnel was planned. A total of 17 new bridges were planned along the route.
On April 18, 1969, the then Deutsche Bundesbahn and the airport company FAG signed a financing agreement for connecting the airport to the rail network.
At the end of 1971 the Deutsche Bundesbahn announced that it would bring the opening of the airport railway at least in the section between the main train station and the airport from autumn 1972 to spring 1972. The total length of the new line, between the threading out at Frankfurt Sportfeld (today Frankfurt Stadium) and the threading in at Kelsterbach, was 7.5 kilometers.
According to the planning status of 1971, two trains per hour and direction should run for commissioning , after the expansion of the company's own S-Bahn tracks towards Frankfurt, a 10-minute cycle was planned. Long-distance trains should not run through the airport during regular operations.
The estimated costs of the project were put at 94 million DM in the preliminary draft of 1968 and around 100 million DM in 1971.
Installation
Commissioning took place on March 14, 1972. In the 1972 summer timetable, 48 local trains ran on the railway line every working day . Due to the high route utilization between the Schwanheim junction and Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof, no timing concept could initially be offered; there were irregular time gaps of up to 60 minutes. Forecasts anticipated the need for an increase in performance from 1978 at the latest. An offer of six S-Bahn trains per hour and direction with a clocked offer was considered necessary. In August 1972, 12,500 travelers were counted every working day, in the summer of 1975 15,500.
The connection in the direction of Kelsterbach / Mainz was still missing for the commissioning of the first construction stage. All trains from the airport also ended at the main train station - the further extension to the city center was pending.
Second construction stage
In a second construction phase, between 1976 and 1979, separate tracks were built for S-Bahn traffic between the Kleyerstraße and Schwanheim junctions, with a new bridge over the Main. The 6.97-kilometer-long S-Bahn new line extends from the main S-Bahn line about two kilometers west of the station hall at the Kleyerstraße junction. It then crosses the Frankfurt-Höchst railway line on two ramps that are up to 36 per thousand steep . It then runs over the Neue Niederräder Bridge and the Frankfurt-Niederrad station to shortly before the Stadion station to the west of the existing tracks and then to the connection to the infrastructure that went into operation in 1972 north of the existing tracks. In the course of the measures, a 210 meter long platform was built in the Sportfeld train station.
The construction work was completed three months earlier than planned at the start of construction. The regularly scheduled operations began with the winter timetable change on 30 September 1979th Since, from the point of view of the operations service, no extensive timetable changes were possible after a winter timetable change, full operation began on June 1, 1980. Two S-Bahn lines (S14: Frankfurt – Mainz – Wiesbaden and S15: Hauptwache – Flughafen) offered a ten-minute route with 93 S-Bahn trains per day and direction. The travel time between the airport and the main train station has been reduced from 18 to 20 to 11 minutes thanks to the new infrastructure.
In October 1975, the underlying contract for the "expansion of the airport S-Bahn including a second Niederräder bridge" was agreed on the basis of the Municipal Transport Financing Act of 1972. Accordingly, the federal government took over 60 percent of the eligible costs of the local transport project, the rest was financed by the state of Hesse. The Deutsche Bundesbahn financed the costs for additional S-Bahn multiple units (class 420) and the costs for planning and construction supervision.
At the end of 1979, 20,000 travelers per day were counted on the route.
In July 2007 the track systems between the stadium and Kelsterbach were renewed during a three-week line closure.
"Gateway Gardens" extension
From February 22, 2016 until the timetable change on December 15, 2019, a new route was built between the airport train station and the Stadion train station for 223 million euros to connect the new Gateway Gardens development to its northern edge.
The new section of the route leads out of the existing route at route kilometers 6.645 with construction kilometers 0.0 and crosses the Mainbahn on a new overpass structure. A double-track tunnel was built between construction kilometers 1.956 and 2.876, to which the new underground S-Bahn station Gateway Gardens is connected to construction kilometers 3.188. The tunnel continues to construction kilometer 3.870. With construction kilometers 3.996, the route joins route kilometers 10.5 of the existing route in the existing tunnel. The existing airport tunnel was upgraded in the section that was still in use. The existing line will then be completely dismantled between kilometers 6.8 and 10.5 including the connecting track to the Mainbahn.
The plans were open to the public from August 13th to September 12th, 2012. Three objections were received and discussed on January 18, 2013. In the same year a plan supplement procedure was carried out. The planning approval decision is dated January 31, 2014. Preparatory measures have been running since the end of 2014 and ended in early 2016. In mid-March 2014, Deutsche Bahn announced that it would start the award procedure for the construction of the 4.2-kilometer section from September 15, 2014. Around half of the new section should run in the tunnel (open construction) and open.
With the timetable change on December 15, 2019, the section with the new train station went into operation. From October 26 to December 14, 2019, the regional train station, Kelsterbach and Raunheim airport were not used. Instead, the trains stopped at the airport long-distance train station.
With the commissioning, the permissible speed in the eastern part of the airport loop was reduced from the previously permissible 120 km / h: between the eastern connection and the western end of the platform at the Gateway Gardens stop to 110 km / h, and then to the regional train station to 90 km / h .
Regardless of this, a connection to the airport loop is being considered as part of the deliberations on the regional tangent west (RTW) from Neu-Isenburg Mitte to Bad Homburg on the one hand and the northwest center on the other hand, a connection to the airport loop, which should start west of the tunnel exit just before the curve to Kelsterbach station .
Web links
- Route and some permissible speeds of the airport loop on the OpenRailwayMap and as a relation on OpenStreetMap
- Public transport development Gateway Gardens - Description of variants - (PDF; 1.48 MiB)
- Gateway Gardens suburban train . Official project page.
- VIDINS.web: Video-based route analysis Gateway Gardens . Overview and videos of the new route section.
References and comments
- ↑ a b c Jürgen Zabel: Three decades of planning and building the S-Bahn in the Rhine-Main area . In: The Railway Engineer . Issue 11, November 1998, pp. 34-55 .
- ↑ It is unclear whether there are even stronger tendencies.
- ^ A b c d e f g h i Walter Engels: The connection of the airport Frankfurt / Main to the track network of the German Federal Railroad . In: The Federal Railroad . tape 46 , no. 3/4 , 1972, ISSN 0007-5876 , pp. 211-218 .
- ↑ a b c d e Christoph Bremer: Route brochure GatewayGardens. (PDF) Information for train drivers. DB Netz, November 5, 2019, p. 3 , accessed December 28, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Tracks in service facilities (FFLU) , DB Netz AG (PDF) (accessed on January 3, 2020)
- ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
- ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
- ↑ a b Kurt Wendler: The solution to local traffic problems in the Frankfurt (M) conurbation . In: The Federal Railroad . tape 43 , no. 21/22 , 1969, ISSN 0007-5876 , pp. 1029-1040 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Udo Marggraf: Airport S-Bahn Frankfurt (Main): Planning and construction of the second section . In: The Federal Railroad . tape 56 , no. 5 , 1980, ISSN 0007-5876 , pp. 327-332 .
- ^ New train station: Frankfurt Airport . In: The Federal Railroad . tape 46 , no. 7 , 1972, p. 355-357 .
- ^ The Frankfurt Airport Railway (M) . In: The Federal Railroad . tape 42 , no. 21/22 , 1968, ISSN 0007-5876 , pp. 863 .
- ^ With the S-Bahn to Frankfurt Airport (M) from spring 1972 . In: The Federal Railroad . Volume 45, Issue 19/20, 1971, ISSN 0007-5876 , p. 1020 .
- ^ Bichler: Airport train now to the city of Frankfurt . In: The Federal Railroad . tape 56 , no. 7 , 1980, ISSN 0007-5876 , pp. 504 .
- ↑ Klaus Daumann: A world airport and the city of Frankfurt are becoming even more attractive . In: The Federal Railroad . tape 56 , no. 6 , 1980, ISSN 0007-5876 , pp. 399-400 .
- ↑ hjs: Route 3683 Frankfurt (M) Kleyerstraße-Kelsterbach . In: IBSE telegram 306 . March 2016, p. 4 .
- ↑ sabu: S-Bahn station is coming. Financing secured for Gateway Gardens . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . September 12, 2014.
- ↑ Next stop: Gateway Gardens . In: Allgemeine Zeitung . October 14, 2013.
- ↑ a b Planning approval according to § 18 AEG for the project "S-Bahn connection Gateway Gardens" (...). (PDF) (No longer available online.) Eisenbahn-Bundesamt, pp. 1, 9–12, 51–53 , archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved March 10, 2018 (file number 55110-551pps / 003-2010 # 004). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ S-Bahn connection to Gateway Gardens: preliminary measures completed. (No longer available online.) Deutsche Bahn AG, December 28, 2015, archived from the original on April 15, 2016 ; accessed on April 15, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Germany-Frankfurt am Main: construction work for railway lines. In: Supplement to the Electronic Official Journal of the European Union . March 18, 2014, accessed March 10, 2018 (Document 2014 / S 054-090891).
S-Bahn: Leading article • Line overview • City tunnel Frankfurt (S1 – S6, S8, S9) • City tunnel Offenbach (S1 / S2 / S8 / S9) | S1 West Taunus Railway • East Rodgaubahn | S2 West Main-Lahn-Bahn • East Offenbach-Bieber – Dietzenbach | S3 North Limes Railway • South Main-Neckar Railway | S4 North Kronberger Bahn | S5 North Homburg Railway | S6 North Main-Weser-Bahn | S7 Riedbahn | S8 / S9 West Mainbahn • Frankfurt Airport Loop • East Südmainische S-Bahn
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