Semmering base tunnel

Semmering base tunnel
	planned tunnel route
use	Railway tunnel
traffic connection	Southern Railway (Austria) , Baltic-Adriatic axis
place	East portal: Gloggnitz , west portal: Mürzzuschlag
length	27.3 km
Number of tubes	2
cross-section	42.7 m²
construction
Client	ÖBB Infrastructure AG
start of building	April 25, 2012
completion	2027 (as of 2020)
business
operator	ÖBB Infrastructure AG
location
Coordinates
Gloggnitz	47 ° 40 ′ 33 " N , 15 ° 55 ′ 21" E
Mürzzuschlag	47 ° 36 ′ 30 ″ N , 15 ° 41 ′ 24 ″ E

Map with all coordinates: OSM | WikiMap

The Semmering Base Tunnel is a 27.3 kilometer long railway tunnel under construction since 2012, which crosses under the northern Alpine chain between Gloggnitz in Lower Austria and Mürzzuschlag in Styria near the Semmering Pass . This base tunnel is part of the Baltic-Adriatic axis and is intended to relieve the historical Semmering Railway . It is intended to reduce the travel time between Gloggnitz and Mürzzuschlag for express trains by around 30 minutes from currently 45 minutes to around 15 minutes.

course

The route variant "Pfaffensattel" is being implemented, which for most of its course lies far south of today's Semmering Railway in the Fischbach Alps area. The two tubes run with a standard center-to-center distance of 40 to 70 m and are connected to one another by crosscuts (mean longitudinal distance: 500 m). The tunnel has an average longitudinal gradient of 8.4 ‰. The design speed is 230 km / h.

The eastern branch from the existing line takes place at the exit of the Gloggnitz train station. Largely as an extension of the existing station passage, the Schwarza and Reichenauer Bundesstrasse are crossed with two newly constructed steel bridges, for which a tub structure was built as a substructure. Immediately afterwards, the tunnel portal follows on the east side of the Schafkogel. This is followed by the Gloggnitz tunnel section, which turns underground from the portal in a south-south-east direction and in the Eichberg area twice crosses under the existing road in a south-facing direction. After crossing the Auebach valley and the Semmering expressway, the Grasberg and the Mitterotter are passed under before the intermediate attack is reached Göstritz . This is where the 13 km long Fröschnitzgraben tunnel section begins, which is driven in both directions from the Fröschnitzgraben intermediate attack . From the intermediate attack on Göstritz, the route turns in a wide right-hand bend in the area of the municipality of Trattenbach in a westward direction, passing under Feistritzsattelstrasse (L 175) and Franklbauerhöhe - and thus the Lower Austria / Styria border - and Pfaffensattelstrasse (L 117), before the intermediate attack is reached Fröschnitzgraben. The route continues to follow the train of the Fischbacher Alps in a westerly direction until the route swings to the northwest in the area of the Hühnerkogel in the Stuhleck ski area and merges into the Grautschenhof tunnel section. In the Mürzzuschlag-Ost / Grautschenhof area, this again crosses the bottom of the valley, the expressway and the existing line, finally coming back to light from the northern side of the valley east of the Mürzzuschlag train station, where the western connection to the Semmering Railway is established after the portal area.

history

initial situation

In 1854, the Semmering Railway, planned by Carl von Ghega , was opened to overcome the Semmering Pass .

In its function as a section of the Southern Railway , one of the busiest railway lines in Austria, the Semmering Railway now causes significant operational restrictions:

The long journey time (around one hour from Wiener Neustadt to Mürzzuschlag ) is no longer competitive with cars, especially in passenger transport.
Due to the restricted clearance profile in the tunnels, combined freight traffic ( Rollende Landstrasse ) and the use of double-decker cars for passenger traffic is not possible.
Because of the steep gradients, heavy freight trains have to be driven with pre-tensioned locomotives or broken down into several parts, which results in operational complications and additional costs.
The curve radii are small and therefore only allow low driving speeds, which limits the route capacity.
The numerous engineering structures cause high maintenance costs.
The tight curve radii lead to heavy wear on the rails, which also makes maintenance more expensive.
Partly because of Slovenia's accession to the EU in 2004, the demand for transport services on a European north-south axis is increasing.

Old projects

For these reasons, several variants for base tunnels under the Semmering Pass were developed between 1950 and 1980. At a press conference in 1983 , the then Minister of Transport, Karl Lausecker, presented detailed plans for the expansion of the Western and Southern Railway, including a 24 km long Semmering base tunnel between Gloggnitz and Langenwang as part of a 32 km long new line. For Mürzzuschlag , an underground train station was to be built at a depth of around 70 m and accessed with elevators.

In 1989 the first Semmering base tunnel was planned and submitted for the route approval process. The route was 22.7 km long and ran between Gloggnitz and Mürzzuschlag. This tunnel should reduce the travel time on the southern runway by at least 30 minutes and remove the technical limitations of the Semmering line, on which only regional and excursion traffic should run after the tunnel went into operation. In 1991 the train path ordinance was issued and in 1994 the railway law notification of the building permit was issued. In 1994 an exploratory tunnel was driven by the Styrian side, which encountered water-bearing rock layers.

planning

Groundbreaking ceremony, from left: Governor Franz Voves , Minister of Transport Doris Bures , Governor Erwin Pröll , Desiree Oen (Deputy Head of Cabinet of the EU Transport Commissioner)

Since no start of construction was foreseeable for this plan due to nature conservation concerns, the project was rescheduled from March 2005. After the invitation to tender in June 2005, new plans were completed in 2010. A longer tunnel results in a smaller slope of the route. Since the planned and now secured Koralm tunnel also has only a slight incline, once both tunnels have been completed, freight trains will be able to use the route from Klagenfurt to Vienna without restrictions.

After a route selection process, Minister Werner Faymann and Governor Erwin Pröll presented a tunnel route south of the previous route with the "Pfaffensattel route" in April 2008 , which the state of Lower Austria could also agree to after the obligatory tests. This variant had a route length of 26.96 km and should make it possible to drive to Mürzzuschlag. The height difference of 239.3 m between Gloggnitz and Mürzzuschlag was mastered with a maximum gradient of 8.4 ‰.

After numerous exploratory drillings in the years 2008 to 2009, optimizations were made and the planned route between the Fröschnitzgraben and the Grautschenhof swiveled to the south. At the end of May 2010, the base tunnel project was submitted for an environmental impact assessment. With the edict of Transport Minister Doris Bures , a building permit was granted on May 30, 2011. The building permit was revoked by the Administrative Court in February 2014 because it raised objections to the overburden landfill and criticized the fact that in the vicinity of an access point to the construction site, noise measurements were only carried out next to a residential building, but not at various points in the associated garden. The ÖBB and the Ministry of Infrastructure intend to stay on schedule despite the delay. A new notification was issued in June 2014.

Portal area Gloggnitz 2014

A building permit was revoked again in mid-2014. From January 2015 negotiations were held about the further construction. On May 26, 2015, the Federal Administrative Court dismissed several complaints against the building permit. In the grounds of the judgment, the court rejected the view taken by tunnel opponents such as the citizens' initiative Alliance for Nature and the daily newspaper Der Standard that there was insufficient public interest in the construction. In December 2015, the Administrative Court revoked the permit under the Lower Austrian Nature Conservation Act, as the project touches a European protected area and a permit can only be granted after a nature impact assessment has been carried out. The objection regarding the approval under the Railway Act was rejected, the decision does not result in any interruption of construction.

Objections to the project

There are water-ecological objections to the Semmering Base Tunnel from the “Alliance For Nature” association and some citizens' initiatives . Critics accuse the association "Alliance For Nature" of being a one-man company that is financed by the car lobby and trying to delay the construction of the tunnel in the interests of the same.

The arguments against the base tunnel dealt with in various proceedings are essentially:

Uncertainty about changes in water horizons, possible drying up of sources important for the water supply. According to Christian Schuhböck, the managing director of the Alliance for Nature, up to 38 million liters of water would flow out of the mountain every day. The Schwarza near Gloggnitz has an average of 1.382 billion liters of water per day. The Mürz, to which the water flows from the south side of the Semmering flow, carries 1.3 billion liters of water per day near Mürzzuschlag. The assumed 38 million liters of water runoff, which according to ÖBB represent a maximum value during the construction work, corresponds to one seventieth of the water runoff through Mürz and Schwarza without taking other flowing waters into account.

Impairment of the Rax-Schneeberg landscape protection area , the European protected area of the Northeastern Randalpen: Hohe Wand - Schneeberg - Rax and the UNESCO World Heritage area Semmeringbahn

Questioning the traffic necessity of the tunnel project

While the opponents of the tunnel see the World Heritage status of the Semmering Railway in jeopardy, according to UNESCO and the expert Toni Häfliger who work for them, the World Heritage status is not impaired.

construction

The 27.3 kilometer long tunnel was originally supposed to be completed in 2025 and connect Gloggnitz and Mürzzuschlag in two parallel tubes. 25 April 2012 took place in Gloggnitz the first sod . The first construction measures were carried out in the open areas and included a. the construction of bridges and roads, as well as river engineering measures. After the Federal Administrative Court had dismissed all appeals in May 2015, construction of the tunnel finally began on July 23, 2015. It should be completed by 2025 and start operating in December 2026. Due to water and rock collapses in spring 2019, the tunnel cannot be opened until 2027. The section to be built will allow a speed of up to 230 km / h. Due to the size of the project, the project was divided into five construction phases:

Portal area Gloggnitz

Lot 1.1 .: East portal in Gloggnitz in September 2019

This section includes the free stretch at the eastern tunnel entrance. From 2012 to the end of 2014, the area west of the Gloggnitz station exit was massively redesigned. In addition to other preparatory work, such as improving the flood protection of the Schwarza, a construction site was set up, two steel bridges over 70 m long over the Schwarza and the newly routed Reichenauer Bundesstraße were built and the portal pre-cut secured on the eastern slope of the Schafkogel. A watertight tank structure was built as a support for the bridge and for the flood-proof underpass of the federal road, and an access road to the future substation was also created. The steel bridges, over which the trains will later enter the tunnel, are used for truck construction site traffic during the construction phase. The tunnel excavation is to be driven over these bridges directly to a loading platform at Gloggnitz station without using public transport . In the existing station area, the track systems were renewed and prepared for the future integration of the new line. The three platforms were also made barrier-free with elevators.

Gloggnitz tunnel section

The Gloggnitz tunnel section comprises the first seven kilometers of tunneling from the east portal. The section ends at the temporary intermediate attack in Göstritz in the community of Schottwien . The section is conventionally excavated from both directions by blasting and dredging . The “temporary access road Maria Schutz ” is used to remove the excavated material at the intermediate point ; The outbreak that occurs at the construction site that is being prepared from the east portal is carried away by freight trains from Gloggnitz station. On November 23, 2015, the tunnel was cut for this easternmost of the three sections in Gloggnitz. The President of the National Council, Doris Bures , acted as tunnel sponsor as former Minister of Transport.

Fröschnitzgraben tunnel section

Longsgraben landfill

This section consists of the Fröschnitzgraben intermediate approach and a total of 13 km of tunnel driving sections, which are driven in two directions from the intermediate approach. The intermediate attack is in the valley of the Fröschnitzgraben south of the village of Steinhaus am Semmering . The eastern section in the direction of Gloggnitz with a length of approx. 8.6 km is being driven with two tunnel boring machines , the western section in the direction of Mürzzuschlag is driven for 4.3 km with conventional driving using the New Austrian Tunneling Method (NÖT). The intermediate approach consists of two 400 m deep shafts with a diameter of approx. 10 m, at the bottom of which a cavern will be built, from which the underground work will start in 2017. An underground emergency stop for train traffic will later be built in this cavern. The excavation is brought to the surface via the shafts, and the Longsgraben landfill was built nearby to deposit the material . To develop the construction site area, extensive preparatory work was required, which was carried out between 2012 and 2014. These include a new system for the drinking water supply of the municipality of Spital am Semmering , the construction and upgrading of construction roads and the Pfaffensattel -Landesstraße, construction of a temporary construction site exit on the Semmering expressway and a bypass in Steinhaus am Semmering and the preparation of the Longsgraben as a landfill area for the Tunnel excavation. On July 13, 2018, driving in both tunnel tubes using tunnel boring machines in the direction of Gloggnitz began; the length of the drive using tunnel boring machines is 9 km and should be completed by 2020.

Grautschenhof tunnel section

Grautschenhof construction site

a pipe under construction

This section comprises the western seven-kilometer tunnel between the Mürzzuschlag portal and the section driven west by the Fröschnitzgraben ZA. In the Grautschenhof district of the municipality of Spital am Semmering, the Grautschenhof intermediate attack is being built with two temporary shafts. As a construction method, the NET with excavator and blasting is planned. The open construction method is used in the area of the west portal near Mürzzuschlag .

Portal area Mürzzuschlag

The westernmost section of the construction work is in the exit area of the Mürzzuschlag train station. The construction lot comprises a section of open-cut tunnel, the construction of a substation in the Langenwang area and operating buildings at the tunnel portal, the connection of the tunnel to the existing line and the modernization of the station. The groundbreaking ceremony for the last section of the base tunnel took place on May 15, 2019.

Incidents

At Easter 2019, approx. 3500 m behind the east portal Gloggnitz after a blast to 25 m, material came out of the tunnel roof . There was a water and mud ingress that continued until daybreak and caused an 8 m deep funnel in a forest area near the Gloggnitz cadastral community of Aue. The smallest overlap of the tunnel in the area of the Auebach valley is only approx. 30 meters; at the point of damage the cover is approx. 110 m thick.

In July 2019, there were creeks colored in white near Gloggnitz. While the ÖBB spoke of harmless cloudiness, operators of a nearby fish farming pond complained about dead fish.

There were two fatal accidents at work in the first half of 2020.

Web links

Commons : Semmering Base Tunnel - Collection of Images

Information about the project on the ÖBB-Infrastruktur website
Webcams from the construction sites
Information from the BMK

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Semmering tunnel comes a year later. In: steiermark.orf.at. Retrieved January 3, 2020 .

↑ ^a ^b Environmental Impact Declaration (PDF; 3.7 MB) May 2010, accessed on July 7, 2012.

^ ÖBB - Semmering Base Tunnel - The Project. Retrieved February 5, 2015 .

↑ New route map of the Semmering Base Tunnel, project homepage of ÖBB , accessed on December 6, 2015.

^ ÖBB: Good prospects for the Semmering base tunnel . In: Die Bundesbahn , 8/1983, p. 541.

^ "We're getting the Semmeringtunnel" on ORF-Steiermark from April 26th, 2008.

↑ Semmering Base Tunnel for EIA submitted to ORF Steiermark on May 31, 2010, accessed on May 31, 2010.

↑ Clear the way for the Semmering Base Tunnel ( memento from April 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive )

↑ Zlen 2011/03/0160, 0162, 0164, 016523 Administrative Court v. 19th December 2013 .

^ Semmering base tunnel: residents force construction freeze , Kurier, February 10, 2014.

↑ Further construction of the Semmering base tunnel approved. In: kurier.at. June 24, 2014, accessed December 24, 2017 .

↑ Many contradictions in the Semmering railway tunnel , Der Standard March 5, 2015.

↑ Semmering Base Tunnel: Light in the Tunnel , Der Standard, July 27, 2014.

^ Rail expansion: Applied Voodoo Economics , Der Standard, January 14, 2013.

↑ Judgment: Semmeringtunnel may be built , Die Presse, May 26, 2015.

↑ orf.at - license for Semmering tunnel revoked . Article dated December 3, 2015, accessed December 3, 2015.

↑ The tunnel skeptic does not fight alone , Kleine Zeitung, November 4, 2015.

↑ The fight against the Semmering tunnel continues , ORF Online, June 8, 2012.

↑ Average from June 1, 2011 to June 1, 2012 according to Lower Austrian water level news ( memento of the original from March 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) 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. @1@ 2
^ Hydrographic Service Styria , measuring point Neuberg / Mürz.
↑ ^a ^b Semmering - The end of the dispute is foreseeable , Solid - Wirtschaft und Technik am Bau, January 23, 2015.
^ ÖBB: Number tricks on the way into the billion hole , Die Presse, January 14, 2014.
↑ Semmering railway tunnel brings Bure's advertisement, derStandard.at , article from July 27, 2014, accessed on March 17, 2015.
^ Article on the Ö1 homepage from October 24, 2014, accessed on May 19, 2015.
^ Toni Häfliger: Report in the Semmering Railway (Austria) mission, 20-23. April, 2010 (PDF; 4.3 MB).
↑ Groundbreaking ceremony for the Semmering railway tunnel. In: noe.orf.at. April 25, 2012. Retrieved November 23, 2017 .
↑ Start of construction for the Semmering base tunnel on ORF-Styria on July 23, 2015, accessed on July 23, 2015.
↑ Semmering base tunnel new can be built in compliance with the prescribed requirements. In: bvwg.gv.at . May 26, 2015.
↑ Semmeringtunnel: last section under construction. steiermark.orf.at, May 15, 2019, accessed on May 16, 2019 .
^ New Semmering Base Tunnel: groundbreaking on April 25th. Kleine Zeitung , April 16, 2012, archived from the original on April 24, 2012 . ; accessed on June 16, 2020 .
^ Construction phases on the ÖBB Infra information portal , accessed on December 7, 201.
↑ Construction information for the Semmering Base Tunnel new - Gloggnitz portal area on the ÖBB Infra information portal, as of October 2014 , PDF file, accessed on December 7, 2015.
^ Gloggnitz tunnel section on the information portal of ÖBB Infra , accessed on December 7, 2015.
↑ Semmering railway tunnel construction started , report on ORF-Online , accessed on November 23, 2015.
^ Official start of construction of the Semmering Base Tunnel in the Lower North Rhine-Westphalia on November 23, 2015, accessed on November 23, 2015.
↑ Construction information for the new Semmering Base Tunnel - preliminary work on the Fröschnitzgraben tunnel on the ÖBB Infra information portal, as of January 2014 , PDF file, accessed on December 8, 2015.