East-west clasp
| Essen light rail, east-west brace | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route length: | 1.5 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1000 mm ( meter gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ost-West-Spange is the name of a stretch of the Essen underground light rail system , which was completed in 1991 and ensured that the trams in the city center were completely underground . It was designed as a pre-transit line for the Stadtbahn and should be replaced by the east-west subway line Frintrop - Abzweig Aktienstr. - Altendorf - Porscheplatz (town hall Essen) - Steele . The underground route is now 1.466 kilometers long.
Routing
Coming from the west, the east-west line runs from the Hans-Böckler-Strasse ramp ( ThyssenKrupp stop ) under Altendorfer Strasse and the Colosseum Theater to the Berliner Platz underground station , further under the site of the former Rheinische Strasse wholesale market on Friedrichstrasse. Along Ebert-Straße to the Rheinischer Platz train station . From there, the tunnel finally bends under the Schützenbahn to the southeast, in order to thread itself into the route from Viehofer Platz without crossing and to reach the branching station Rathaus Essen .
Route occupancy
The tunnel section is now used continuously by four tram lines, which are bundled between the western end of the tunnel at the ThyssenKrupp stop and the Rathaus Essen train station .
Mondays to Fridays during the day, all lines are operated every 10 minutes, in the morning rush hour there are additional reinforcement courses on line 105.
In the autumn of 1991 and from 1993 to 1995, the route was also occupied by the underground duo buses of the CE45 and CE47 lines. When it opened, the east-west spline served six tram lines (103, 104, 105, 109, 114, 115), although some with lower frequencies.
Building history
The geological conditions required a division into two construction lots. Both were excavated by miners and built using shotcrete with the aid of various techniques. For the eastern construction section (construction lot 30), it was decided to use the compressed air method , in the western section (construction lot 31) for lowering the groundwater . The construction lot boundary is on Berliner Platz, where the starting shaft was also sunk (northeast corner of the Friedrich-Ebert- and Segerothstraße junction).
HOCHTIEF , Bilfinger Berger , Dyckerhoff & Widmann , Alfred Kunz, Strabag and Wayss & Freytag received the order for the shell construction in June 1984 . The construction time was estimated at five years.
opening
The line was provisionally put into operation on September 28, 1991. In order to establish the final route connection to the existing network at Porscheplatz train station (today: Rathaus Essen) (dismantling of the temporary Schützenbahn ramp and installation of the tracks and switch connections there), an interim solution was found during which only the two outer tracks of the station could be used , which severely restricted the capacity of the station. For this reason, lines 103 and 109 were separated for about two weeks, and the morning repeater trips on the other lines were canceled or were cut in front of the tunnel.
From October 13, 1991, the Porscheplatz train station (today: Essen Town Hall) was fully available again, with all four platforms. The final commissioning finally took place on November 9, 1991, with which the track bus lines CE45 and CE47 were also led through the tunnel.
Problems
For route 109, the route through the tunnel meant the loss of its old route from Berliner Platz via Limbecker Platz and on through today's Weststadt via Frohnhauser Straße. Since it had been decided against another western access ramp in the tunnel network and a guided tour through Westendstrasse to Frohnhauser Strasse was out of the question due to differences with the property owner Krupp , it was diverted from the Alfred-Krupp-Schule stop via the Helenenstrasse junction .
Together with the other tram lines already operating there, this led to permanent congestion at the Helenenstrasse tram crossing as the western end point of the bundling route.
As a first measure to relieve the congestion on the route, the trips on line 114 (reinforcement of line 104 in the morning) on Helenenstrasse were interrupted in autumn 1991 and thus taken out of the tunnel. The 5-minute intervals on line 105 have also been replaced by double units at 10-minute intervals.
Due to the lane buses of the CE45 and CE47 lines and their frequent breakdowns in the tunnel, traffic on this most important east-west route often came to a standstill and often caused delays. The solution remained to let the buses run on the surface again, which happened from 1995.
Due to the ongoing development and development of the so-called Krupp belt since the 2000s, the opportunity arose to plan a new route for line 109. After a few years of uncertainty, this was built in 2014. Since October 20, 2014, it has been on a new line that branches off to the west of the ThyssenKrupp stop from Altendorfer Strasse and leads over Berthold-Beitz-Boulevard to Frohnhauser Strasse, thus relieving the Helenenstrasse junction .
plans
At the beginning of the 2000s, voices were raised calling for line 109 to be relocated from the tunnel through the city center. In addition to travel time savings and vehicle savings, this would also have reduced the traffic load on the east-west stretch by a quarter (six trips per hour during rush hour ). However, the plans were neither financially nor politically enforceable and were rejected.
See also
- Tram Essen - Main article about the Essen tram
- Stadtbahn Essen - Main article about the Essen Stadtbahn
- Stadtbahnnetz Rhein-Ruhr - Main article about the Stadtbahn system in the greater Rhine-Ruhr area, of which the Essen Stadtbahn is a part
- Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr - Main article about the transport and tariff association, of which the Essen city railway is a part
literature
- Groneck, Christoph; Lohkemper, Paul; Schwandl, Robert: Rhein-Ruhr Stadtbahn Album 1, Berlin 2005
- Verkehrshistorische Arbeitsgemeinschaft EVAG eV (Ed.): 25 years of the Essen underground railway . Special rally, Essen 2002
- City of Essen, U-Bahn-Bauamt (publisher): U-Stadtbahn Essen, construction lots 30/31, Essen (no year)
- Flyer for the opening of the track "Things are rolling really well ..." by EVAG and City of Essen, Essen 1991
Web links
- jochen-schoenfisch.de/stadtbahn - private website about the Rhein-Ruhr Stadtbahn
- evag.de - official website of the Essener Verkehrs-AG
- essen.de - official website of the city of Essen
- Pro Bahn - passenger representation in the Ruhr area