"Question of the century" - This is how Hamburg wants to relieve its main station

It is certainly one of the largest of the many major transport projects in Hamburg: a new S-Bahn tunnel is to be built between the main station and Altona over a distance of around six kilometers. On Monday, Transport Senator Anjes Tjarks (Greens) and the project manager at Deutsche Bahn, Bernd Homfeldt, presented the five possible routes. By the end of the year, a decision should be made as to which routes are planned more specifically.

Tjarks spoke of a "question of the century" for the city. Because today's connecting railway, which connects the Altona, Dammtor and Hauptbahnhof stations, is essentially the same as the city of Hamburg, the railway operator at the time and the city of Altona had planned in 1898. With the difference that there were significantly fewer trains back then. Today, according to Deutsche Bahn, the route is 140 percent full and is therefore significantly overloaded.

Since the end of 2019 there has been a plan to relieve the current connecting railway from S-Bahn traffic. Only regional and long-distance trains would then stop on the surface route. This would also free up two urgently needed tracks in the main station. In 2021, the project was promoted to the highest priority level in the requirements plan for federal rail routes as part of the considerations on the Germany cycle of the railways. At that time, around 2.66 billion euros were estimated for the tunnel. Last year, Hamburg and Deutsche Bahn commissioned a feasibility study in order to be able to start planning.

The results are now available and will be published shortly. The paper does not say anything about costs and schedules. Five possible routes for the new S-Bahn tunnel, which is officially called the connecting railway relief tunnel or VET for short, are shown there. Two routes run north of today's railway, two south. A fifth tunnel variant would run directly below the current connecting railway.

On Thursday, Tjarks wants to present the plans and the possible courses in the transport committee. This is when the discussion about the right course begins, in which the residents of the Hanseatic city should also be involved. Because depending on the course of the route, there will be large above-ground construction sites - and you only want to set them up if the course of the S-Bahn tunnel is supported by the residents.

The transport senator emphasizes that the debates should be open-ended. However, he himself seems to find one variant in particular not as attractive as the other four. Should the tunnel run directly below the current route, only the existing stops would remain. Additional S-Bahn stops would be added to both the southern and northern variants – and the Sternschanze and Holstenstraße stops previously used by the S-Bahn could be converted into regional transport stops.

"From the city's perspective, these stops have potential," Tjarks said. Because they could keep commuters from Schleswig-Holstein away from the main station. "If you want to go to Holstenstraße anyway, you don't have to go to the main station." The Hanseatic city's main station is not only considered to be overloaded on the tracks, the infrastructure of the station built in 1906 also reached its limits on the platforms decades ago.

In addition, according to Tjarks, it could make sense to connect areas not previously served by the rapid transit system to the rail network if a billion-dollar project is already being planned. The railway emphasizes that there are hardly any significant cost differences between the five variants classified as feasible. The construction times did not differ significantly either, since the tunnel lengths in particular differed, but only by around 250 meters in each case. "However, once the tunnel boring machine is underground, these meters don't make much of a difference," emphasized Homfeldt.

Depending on the variant selected, additional S-Bahn stops could be created at Schlump (previously only subway), Alsenplatz (completely new rapid transit connection), Feldstrasse (subway) and Max-Brauer-Allee (new rapid transit connection). .

The new S-Bahn tunnel would be utilized at around 80 percent, just like the connecting line. This means that both routes are "sustainable," said Ute Plambeck, the company representative of Deutsche Bahn for Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, at the presentation of the feasibility study. Tjarks emphasized that this would increase the punctuality of all trains on the routes - and that this would also make it possible to consider replanning regional transport. To date, almost all regional connections to and from Hamburg have started and ended at the main train station. A continuous journey from the communities north of Hamburg to the communities south of the Hanseatic city is usually only possible with changes.

Apart from the amount of the costs, according to Tjarks, it is currently still unclear who will bear the costs. The old federal government has promised to cover 75 percent of the costs, mainly because an S-Bahn tunnel is being built and local transport projects usually have to be supported by the cities in which they are built. According to Tjarks, the Senate is of the opinion that the project is due to Deutsche Bahn's German schedule. This means that 100 percent of the costs must be covered. In short, according to the Green politician: "That will still have to be discussed."