King Willem Alexander tunnel
| King Willem Alexander tunnel | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Northern entrance to the tunnel
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| Official name | Koning Willem-Alexander tunnel | |||
| use | Road tunnel | |||
| traffic connection | Autobahn Autoweg  
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| place | Maastricht ( Netherlands ) | |||
| length | 2300 m | |||
| Number of tubes | 4th | |||
| construction | ||||
| building-costs | 1.2 billion euros | |||
| start of building | 2009 | |||
| completion | 2016 | |||
| business | ||||
| operator | Rijkswaterstaat | |||
| release | 2016 | |||
| location | ||||
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| Coordinates | ||||
| Portal Geusselt | 50 ° 51 ′ 31 " N , 5 ° 42 ′ 47" E | |||
| Europaplein portal | 50 ° 50 ′ 39 " N , 5 ° 42 ′ 58" E | |||
Map with all coordinates: 
The King Willem Alexander Tunnel is a two-story, four-lane road tunnel for crossing the city center of Maastricht . The tunnel is 2.3 km long and part of the A2 motorway and the N2 car route. It is the first two-story tunnel in the Netherlands and was commissioned at the end of 2016 after a construction period of four years.
prehistory
The A2 motorway starts at the Belgian border and runs via Maastricht, Eindhoven , 's-Hertogenbosch and Utrecht to Amsterdam . It is one of the oldest and most heavily used motorways in the Netherlands. The route leads directly through the city of Maastricht. While crossing the A2 motorway became one equipped with lights so far Autoweg downgraded called N2. Since there is no bypass, the city of Maastricht was regularly a bottleneck for long-distance traffic, which led to traffic jams and annoyance for residents. Suitable solutions were already being sought in the early 1980s. The decision-making process dragged on because of the complexity and the expected high costs. In 2004 the planning for today's solution began and in 2009 the contract to build the tunnel was awarded to a consortium consisting of four companies under the name "Avenue2". The tunnel was built using the cut-and-cover method.
Description of the structure
The tunnel is two-story, with one tube on each level for each direction of travel, resulting in a total of four tubes. Each tube has two lanes. The upper level serves as a car route for local traffic and the lower level as a motorway for through traffic. There is a no-overtaking ban for trucks in the entire tunnel. The maximum speed is 80 km / h in the upper tube and 100 km / h in the lower tube. At both ends of the tunnel there are complex traffic junctions, in the north the Geusselt junction 
and in the south the Europaplein (Europa Platz) 
.
The area above the tunnel has been designed with a lot of effort, it bears the name "Groene Loper" (Green Runner). Instead of the previously busy, multi-lane thoroughfare, there is a lot of green, a two-lane avenue for local traffic as well as cycle and footpaths. Over two thousand linden trees were planted for the avenue.
financing
The public sector paid 850 million euros of the construction costs of around 1.2 billion euros. The rest is borne by the “Avenue2” consortium, which in return has the right to develop adjacent real estate and to sell it until 2016.
See also
- Website for the tunnel
- Hoe werkt de A2-tunnel straks on YouTube , film describing the tunnel (Dutch)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Detlef Stoller: Two-story tunnel against traffic chaos in Maastricht . In: INGENIEUR.de . August 24, 2015.