If you've ever been to Frankfurt, one of the more impressive things to see is the Bahnhof or train station.
When the subway system began to arrive in the 1960s....there was always talk of this attempt to build a deep (emphasize REAL deep) cavern area where long-distance trains would pull into the station, and just proceed straight ahead. The present method? You pull into the station, and park the train, and a engine pulls to the rear, and will pull the train out of the station in roughly 15 minutes.
So I noticed via the regional news (HR), that there's a hot topic now in Frankfurt. The city and station folks are conducting a review (it'll be 2021 before it's done). They think they can dig way down under the current station (even below the subway system).
Estimated cost? 3.5-billion Euro is what is openly discussed.....so you can figure with screw-up's and problems....this is likely to be a 6-billion Euro job.
Here's the amusing thing. They've added up the saved minutes and figured the timing on this already....it's eight minutes that you'd save. The amount of tunneling? They are talking about four separate tracks leading into or out of the station area.
Chances of passing? As many problems as the Stuttgart program has seen, I'm guessing most people would prefer things to stay as they are, and not screw with the Frankfurt station. But it'd be a way to modernize the Frankfurt station...taking an entire decade to probably complete this project.
3 comments:
That is a crazy amount of money for very little return on investment.
That's generally what they said in Stuttgart, and about a quarter of the Stuttgart-21 project was to allow pull-in and pull-out trains (saving 10 minutes on each trip). Personally, I can think of a dozen small projects adding up to four-billion Euro, that would have more pay-back to the consumers and passengers.
Agreed, Schnitzel Republic. Here in Las Vegas, they are building what many say is one of the finest sports stadiums in the world. (I dunno. That is what 'they' say. The pictures look nice. Anyway...) It is costing about 1.67 billion Euro. So, you could get one of those and produce some revenue. Maybe a new university and still have plenty of money to pump into the primary schools for the younger kids.
Many better uses for the money, me thinks.
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