Yeah, and the last five years has not been drilling, but installing. The last year has been testing and tweaking (accordingt to the ORF article.)
Seems like a great project outcome. Mostly within budget, no political chaos due to delays (AFAICT) and allowing several months for testing before announcing it open.
Just yesterday B1M published an interesting video about the future longest tunnel between Lyon, France and Turin, Italy. It will be more than 50km, deeply below the Alps. The project has finally secured funding, from both countries and EU, and is on track.
Tunnels are actually pretty safe in earthquakes, Japan for example is criss crossed with them.
A tunnel is actually the least likely to shake; if you shake a jello with fruit inside it, the surface moves a lot but the interior fruit won’t move all that much.
The 57 km Gotthard Base Tunnel has been in operation since 2016. There's also a 3km long tunnel between France and Italy that opened in 1882. Nowadays there's probably hundreds of 1km+ tunnels in the Alps.
Italy isn't a puny country, it's over 1000kms between Sicily and the Alps (Like LA to Albuquerque), seems the fault lines reaches northern Italy (about 100km from the alps) but the amount of larger quakes seems smaller there.
It would be brilliant. Currently the Paris-Milan train line is barely competitive with flying between the two; knocking off 2-3 hours from the trip would make it around 4 hours in total, which is very competitive with flying (1h30 flight, but both CDG and Malpensa are big airports far outside the city, with significant time wasted getting to them, through security, etc). And of course it would be massive for Lyon - Turin, and Lyon - Milan too, where flying wouldn't even make sense any more.
Booked a trip yesterday, without knowing this has happened. ~1h off my usual trip time, which I got accustomed to in the last two decades. It's extremely awesome!
Its sister tunnel - the Semmering Base Tunnel [0] - is scheduled to be completed in 2030. These two combined greatly reduce the travel time from Vienna to Graz and Klagenfurt (combined 1h 15m time saving).
You don't hear that much about great engineering projects today, yet it's still an incredible feat to build those.
It used to be exactly one third, i.e 16 2/3 so you can have generators on the same axle. However, being exactly one third caused unwanted resonance effects. So with the advent of power electronics it has been slightly shifted to 16.7 Hz. Within tolerance for the motors, but no unwanted resonance anymore.
My high school physics is not sufficient to really understand it.
They actually used that in the US as well for railways. I remember a post years ago on the Classic Computer Mailing List from someone who said that their father had worked on the railways and pointed out that the "high bay" station lighting all ran off 3-phase 16.7Hz power. Apparently it looked okay at ground level but was quite disconcerting when you looked up and saw the lights flickering in patterns of three.
Austria is the only European country I've been to that doesn't have cheap affordable intercity buses. Seemingly none at all. It was kind of strange... Does anyone know why?
The only options to get around was the expensive train system - and anyone I asked was bewildered why I would want to take a bus.. Maybe next time I should look in to carpooling or some other options. How do low income people get around typically? I need to go to attend a conference, but it's not cheap coming from Asia
EDIT: Seems I was wrong! Sorry. There are buses, (maybe fewer than other countries?)
That part of Europe has historically loved its trains. The train is more than transportation there. It’s an institution and part of the culture. Have you been to a toy store and looked at the precision and cost of the train sets? They don’t just ride the train, the train is part of who they are and what they love, starting when they’re small children. The trains run on-time, they’re clean, and overall they tend to be more modern. In addition, people walk.
Trains are also just more comfortable. More space, more comfortable seats, more space for luggage, you can walk around, better bathrooms, easier to work from especially in the 4 seat configuration, … Personally I would always prefer the train even if it is a bit slower. Once you account for traffic a bus that is scheduled to be faster ends up slower anyway, especially when you really needed it to be on time
Flixbus definitely exists in Austria, but people generally take the train, which is much faster and more comfortable.
There are various discount membership plans available that sometimes pay for themselves after just one round-trip or even one-way ride, and on the most popular connections there's now a private operator competing with the state-owned railway.
A yearly flat-rate ticket for intercity trains is also relatively affordable for EUR 1400 per year.
Doesn't Flixbus cap their fleet to 100 km/h? I'd be surprised if that's higher than the average speed of most intercity trains.
Graz–Vienna is admittedly a bit of a special case, since the railway tunnel there isn't finished yet, so I could see cars/buses being faster. (The train makes up for that in views, though ;)
And the train is even slower than that. Let that sink in.
>Graz–Vienna is admittedly a bit of a special case
Special case at being ripped off when flights from London, Paris or Berlin across the continent are cheaper than trains from Graz to Vienna.
>The train makes up for that in views, though ;)
It really doesn't when you factor in the ticket prices. Some people who are not tourists use transportation out of necessity to get from A to B as quickly and cheaply as possible, not to do sightseeing and die of old age, so speed and value for money is more critical than what you see out the window. And a significant part of the trip is through tunnels anyway.
And there's only so many times you can see the same hills and houses before it gets repetitive and you go back to your phone. Not to mention if you travel second class, trains on that route are typically full of loud obnoxious people talking on their phone on speaker mode, who don't have courtesy for others so it ruins any enjoyment of sightseeing unless you have good noise cancelling headphones.
I remember the last time I took the train in Austria, between Wien and Linz there was a section where the odometer on the train was showing 220 km/h.
A large part of Austria is the Alps, that poses special challenges for trains. That's why these base tunnels are so important. Funny you ignored the comment about the Semmering tunnel being built, and how it will help with the travel time on that section.
Flights are so cheap because they are subsidized (primarily the fuel), and their CO2 emissions are just swept under the rug. There is also this problem of not having enough high speed cross-country trains, and even if they exist, you usually have to change trains and book tickets separately for each country. The EU has a plan to improve on this in the next 20 years.
> trains on that route are typically full of loud obnoxious people talking on their phone on speaker mode, who don't have courtesy for others so it ruins any enjoyment of sightseeing unless you have good noise cancelling headphones.
Yes, because Ryanair or Wizzair flights never have loud obnoxious people...
> Special case at being ripped off when flights from London, Paris or Berlin across the continent are cheaper than trains from Graz to Vienna.
A "Sparschiene" ticket from Vienna to Graz typically costs between 10€ and 25€. With the Vorteilscard, a regular ticket costs 22€. (I believe the full regular price only exists to rip off tourists :)
"Reverse discrimination" is generally legal under EU law.
For example, EU law grants the non-EU spouses of EU citizens living in an EU country other than the EU citizen's home country much broader right than the EU citizen's home country otherwise might.
When the tracks allow it, the Railjet goes over 200 km/h. Vienna-Linz only takes 1 hour, which is about twice as fast as by car. Same for the new Koralm track.
I agree that regional trains are often painfully slow. But that's also because there are so many stops.
Vienna-Graz is mainly slow because it has to cross the Semmering mountains and the tracks date back to the K&K days. This will change with the Semmering tunnel.
Oh really? I took the Flixbus from the Czech Republic and is stopped near the border and then after that it was train only. Maybe I ended up in a weird spot then! I just checked and there are indeed buses in-country. Strange that I somehow couldn't find any then
I would blame how Austria, a very small country, is organized into 9 provinces that actually have their own budget and can pass their own laws on some topics.
Rail service is funded at the federal level, so there's less arguing about who pays for what. Bus service, however, is managed by regional transport associations funded by the provinces. This creates disincentives for cross-province bus routes because no single province wants to pay more than its 'fair' share for a service that primarily benefits voters in another province.
Similar dynamics play out at the city/province level. Take Linz, the provincial capital of Upper Austria: the city has had a social democratic (SPÖ) mayor continuously since 1945, while the province has had a conservative (ÖVP) governor for exactly the same period of 80 years. This disincentivizes the province government from helping to fund public transport within or into the city, because it's a win for social democratic city voters, while the more conservative rural voters would rather take the car anyway since they often can't do the whole trip by public transport.
Arguably the reason for the excellent public transport in the city of Vienna is that they are also their own province. Their mayor/governor, who has been a social democrat as well for the last 80 years, always controls both levels of funding.
Almost noone in Austria pays the full price. You either use "Sparschiene" (cheap tickets you book in advance), the Vorteilscard (membership card which gives a 50% discount on every regular ticket) or the various annual or monthly flatrate tickets (e.g. "Klimaticket").
To tell you the truth I was shocked how expensive trains are in whole Europe. Like arent railroads the cheapest and easiest type of road to be built. For real, to get a fair price you would need to book the train like 2 months before the trip.
Small county with small market monopolized by few politically connected local players in every major sector of the economy who sometimes enjoy regulatory protectionism from the government to keep foreign competitors out and turn a blind eye on racketeering practices.
That's how everything, including stuff made in Austria is more expensive than the same stuff sold in Germany even though wages are lower.
Same issues like in other small markets like New Zeeland except Austria being an EU member should have more pressure from free trade competition but that doesn't always work in favor of the consumers.
yes, we do, e.g. flixbus. and some others I think. Haven't been traveling for a while by bus around Austria. Apples/Oranges probably, but I do know vienna<->bratislava has like 3-4 different companies operating the same route with similar busses at similar times with different prices.
And talking about apples/oranges, let me add apples/bananas: Vienna to Budapest by train cost a lot when booking via öbb. And not a lot when booking via Regiojet.
The problem is the offers are all scattered around imho.
Yep, single tickets on Austrian ÖBB is not cheap at all without subscriptions or discounts.
Prices are good only if you use it regularly as a commuter via a yearly subscription (Klimaticket), but for one off trips, prices are more expensive than flying.
Me too! But why did you need a quick connection between Klagenfurt and Graz as a child? I would have rather longed for a high speed train between Hermagor and Villach ;-)
What kid doesn't go through a 'train phase?' and a grand plan to improve the railway could be exciting to a child even if it's more spectacle than utility.
When I was a kid, in the early 90s, there was a diagram in the local library of the planned Dublin metro. It was, at that point, an old plan, I think from the early 80s.
The third attempt at a Dublin metro just got planning permission a few weeks ago; said planning is now bogged down in a judicial review.
Somewhat envious of Austria’s speed in this sort of thing, really…
At least I got to enjoy the highway connection between Noetsch and Villach when I was a child. Both of those things were big things due to local politics (hi Haider) when I grew up. Practically I did not care. But it was ubiquitous for a while in the news.
I remember reading some time ago that there is a real difficulty running passenger trains and freight trains over the same rails. With freight, you can tolerate bumps at the rail-join points, and freight tends to create such bumps because the heavy loads push the rails slightly out of place. Also, freight routes should be limited to a 2% grade, whereas 4% can be tolerated for the lighter passenger cars. Have these problems been mitigated on the Koralm Railway? Anyone know how?
Interstate 70 in Colorado is very problematic. It is constantly backed up. Colorado needs to learn from this and get serious about rail for shipping and for human travel.
I feel you man. Problem is that would be a major dollar infrastructure problem that would need federal dollars. With a deficit over 40T dollars and political wind blowing against more federal spending generally and Colorado not being a favored state at the moment I'd say the chances are slim of it happening in the next three years. It would be boffo if some liberal corporate billionaire put his shoulder against the project like that enough to inspire a combination of a Colorado bond issue, some state funding and support. The way California handled its high speed rail in Central valley here is not an inspiration I'll tell you that right now. What a fcuk-up and embarrassment that is. What were they thinking?
IF Colorado did this all alone they could potentially avoid a lot of the high costs that result from getting federal dollars. Maybe - Federally funded projects tend to cost 4-7x would they would elsewhere in the world - but nobody really knows why and so it is questionable if Colorado could figure out how to build cheap. Still the potential is there. Colorado's costs would be a lot higher at 7x the cost with federal funding vs doing it all themselves for reasonable costs - but only if they solve all the issues the drive costs up.
Note that I have no confidence Colorado will tackle the issues driving costs up. Several of the known factors are places where politically powerful people (from all sides so don't bring in class warfare) are increasing costs and they let you cut them off. There are a lot of unkonwen issues left after factoring the above, and it is likely they also have politically powerful people increasing costs.
This is the first time I've read anything in English about Kärnten and Steiermark. Styria and Carinthia are impressive names. It's as if the Roman Empire were still there.
Considering, both, that most of the austrian states are the successors of duchies that existed already more than 500 years ago in the HRE, and that their governors today are also jokingly called „princes“, your idea is not that far fetched.
It is 33km, and it took from 2008 to 2025 to build it. That is a damn long time! The Toei Oedo line in Tokyo is 40+km and was built in about 10 years. My guess about the wild difference: The geoengineering of the Koralm Tunnel is way more complex, and/or the rock is much harder. Can anyone with experience in this area comment? I would like to learn more. I guess that most of central Tokyo is aluvial plains (Shanghai is similar), so you are basically digging through clay and sand -- easy stuff for modern tunnel boring machines.
The rock they dug through for Koralm is, no hyperbole, about as bad as it gets. It's the gnarliest part of what's under the Alps and required them switching back and forth between boring and blasting.
Being two separate tunnels, it also needs twice as much excavation work. It's also ~25x deeper than Toei Oedo (4000ft vs 157ft). At 4000ft the rock itself is 45-50C!
The Koralm tunnel has a different temperature gradient, as the depth is a consequence of a mountain on top of the tunnel, rather than an increased proximity to the earth crust/core.
> "The undisturbed rock temperature varies from 10 °C, in tunnel sections close to the portals, to 32 °C in the tunnel centre"
32°C is still a significant engineering concern, but not as consequential as 45–50°C.
Looks like they reported a peak of 39C in the summer. Either way I figured that would still be pretty miserable, especially if it gets up around 100% humidity.
Assumed they would at least have their own air in the bits that didn't have aircon/ventilation while it was being built. They don't even need to do that anymore! The ventilation systems they used are as advanced and bespoke as the boring machines.
Because they were blasting too, they couldn't utilize full-face pressurization of the entire tunnel to maintain negative pressure to suck all of the fumes, dust, silicates, etc out like they would if it was only boring. That's 1-3kPa, "leaks are jets of air, can pull an airlock door closed hard enough to break bones" territory.
Instead, they have a bunch of dedicated supply and exhaust vents going to the surface (some up to 2m in diameter) and sets of connections between the two tunnels with huge axial fans. It allows them to selectively apply "slight" negative pressure to any of the individual segments when they need to clear them. 50Pa is ~10x what you encounter in a negative pressure highrise. It is described as a "constant slight breeze"
I found this short video on some of the safety features of the finished tunnel. It almost looks "too serious", like something out of a James Bond movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8trt96huf0
A tunnel on the Kurobe gorge railway (originally used for dam contruction, now partially open to tourists) has reached 160 °C (!!) during construction, but has cooled down to manageable 40 °C since.
It's also really hard to make the tunnel remain a tunnel over its expected 150 year lifespan - given that it basically runs through a fault line. They had to study and test local geology for about 15 years, build certain sections to expect some movement over time, as well as kit everything out with a lot of sensors.
Overall an amazing achievement, and unsurprising it took this long to figure out!
After seeing some of the safety features in a short video I linked in another comment, I get the impression that this is either going to last much longer than 150 years or something so catastrophic will happen that nothing that could have been built would've persisted.
Good point about "boring vs blasting". I didn't think about that. I remember reading about the longest tunnel in Japan between Honshu and Hokkaido (Seikan Tunnel). I recall that it was entirely hand drilled due to unusual soil conditions. I wonder if that would still be true today with state of the art tunnel boring machines.
> Being two separate tunnels, it also needs twice as much excavation work.
Yet another great point. At some of the Toei Oedo stations, you can see a miniature model of the weird overlapping twin tunnel boring machines. So, in theory it is two tunnels, but in practice, it was dug as a single, weird overlapping twin tunnel.
You also cannot directly compare a metro line to intercity rail. That line in Tokyo was like what, 20th they built all in the same terrain, they are really good at this by now. Meanwhile, rail tunnels are usually bespoke projects.
It is very strange that countries like Austria, Japan or Switzerland have some of the best rail systems in the world even though their bridge and tunnel requirements are huge. In the US building rail on any terrain seems to be more expensive than basically anything one can build in Austria.
Not strange at all! If you want to go by car you must build even more tunnels. Mountainous regions favor rail just like urban areas do. Furthermore, 19th century investments into rail still pay off in mountainous regions, because once you build a railway bridge or tunnel, you are kind of dumb not to use it. In the USA competition from trucks or cars is much tougher.
Note the US has the number one freight rail system in the world by most measures (there are lots of ways to measure this depending on how you want to abuse the statistics). Some of this is Europe has better river routes to work with (I don't know Asia), but some of this is Europe has focused more on passengers to the point where freight is unable to get through forcing trucks.
Kanto is flat, it's the only region in Japan that could sustain feeding such a massive population and could allow building the first mega city on the planet.
Combine that with the massive engineering and rail experience Japanese have, and it's no surprise imho that combined with favorable geography they could build it quickly.
This is interesting analysis. Many good points. Regarding this comment: "first mega city on the planet": As I understand, in the modern era, Beijing was the first city in the world to have one million people.
The Japanese islands are situated in one of the most geologically active regions on Earth, primarily characterized by multiple subduction zones where four major tectonic plates, producing 'new' Earth, emerge.
Can i please say something about the announcement itself. I marvel at its simplicity and focus on the outcomes & benefits.
Especially its lack of trying to link it to a political party / person is very refreshing to see and i wish can be emulated in some of the more developing nations.
It's a little awkward, but what it's trying to communicate doesn't really work well in one sentence.
As a native US English speaker, I would probably write something like "Austria opens the world's sixth longest railway tunnel: 27 year long project arrives on schedule and under budget."
I know its a small nitpick, but I got unreasonably annoyed at the two "Financed by EU fund x" banners having different flag sizes, paddings, fonts etc.
How is there no unifying design language for these?
Is there any design? It's just the flag and a title + subtitle.
Also, the EU is the most efficient government in terms of overhead, and having seen some of it up close not wasting time or money on "unifying design languages" for every single funding billboard is very much EU style. Just copy-paste by some local authority in Powerpoint in most cases, I bet.
Looking at the modern iterations of the program guidelines for these programs, especially [1] and [2], you basically have to use the flag, the text over, under or to either side of the flag (your choice) in one of 6 fonts (Arial, Auto, Calibri, Garamond, Tahoma, Trebuchet, Ubuntu or Verdana), and have some rules for minimum distance, minimum size and proportionality. They absolutely could have made those two match visually. But each program offers premade banners that match the design criteria, and those don't always harmonize. As you say, nobody cared
What are the funding billboards for, anyway? They're an eyesore, and it's all paid by us EU taxpayers anyway. They should say "financed by you", or better yet, not exist to begin with.
The EU budget [..] accounts annually for around 1% of the EU's GNI (gross national income), or around €160-180 billion. National public spending by EU countries averages nearly 50% of their respective GNI.
I'm not sure I understand your comment tbh. Where does the money come from, if not from EU taxpayers?
> the EU subsidy budget is dwarfed by each country's national budget.
My comment had nothing to do with that.
The page you linked has a question "How is the budget funded", which lists the revenues:
> Another difference between the EU budget and national budgets is that the EU lacks direct taxation power to finance its budget and instead relies on revenues called “own resources”.
> These revenues are:
> - Custom duties on imports into the EU
> - A small part of the VAT collected by each EU country
> - A contribution based on the amount of non-recycled plastic waste in each EU country
> - National contribution from each EU country based on its gross national income (GNI). All member states contribute according to their share in the combined GNI of EU countries. This is the largest share of the own resources.
I mean, see Brexit; there's a bit of a "what have the Romans ever done for us" aspect to a lot of euroscepticism. Some of the more Brexit-y regions were also amongst the poorest, and thus the largest beneficiaries of EU funding (eg https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/26/cornwall-fea...)
The idea is to show people the benefits of the EU, essentially. It is unclear how well it works.
Cornwall, say, had reason to feel hard done by; it was the second-poorest NUTS 3 region in Northern Europe. It's just that they were directing their ire at Europe, and not at the national government where it belonged. All but one of the ten poorest NUTS 3 regions in Northern Europe were in the UK pre-Brexit (along with the very richest NUTS 3 region, inner London), and there's a reason for that.
(Of course, the problem is now solved by Brexit; as the UK no longer participates in Eurostat, _none_ of the poorest regions in the Eurostat statistics are in the UK!)
Yes, I remember Wales received a lot of EU funding for infrastructure and there used to be those "funded by the EU" signs everywhere. They voted in favour of Brexit.
I think this sort of things does little to convince people. The road network was there and working before the EU, it is still there and working now.
Especially, people were well aware that the UK was a consistent net contributor to the EU budget so knew that EU funding for infrastructure was not reallly a benefit.
Well, except that in the UK the devolved nations (Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland) receive more funding from the government than England does. For instance, Wales received 20% more money per person than England does.
Devolution itself also means that, effectively, the UK government is in charge of England while the devolved governments are in charge of their respective nations, so just looking at which projects the UK government funds is misleading.
So, it is not accurate to say that regions are neglected, and you might even argue that ultimately the South East of England and England overall fund the whole country...
Overall, I do not know if that was specifically a benefit for Wales. Obviously in the end the Welsh decided that the cons outweighted the pros, anyway.
They put them up with and without the EU funding info, right? Here most is not EU funded, but there are still signs, because how else do you know what is going on? Or are big construction projects completely unsigned where you live?
They used to be unsigned. I agree it's good for the funding to be transparent, but a government and/or EU-wide website would be fine to list the supported projects. No need for ugly signs.
I (pro-EU Austrian) think they are great, as they show that we also get huge benefits through our EU membership and that we can do such enormous megaprojects only together
Also, eyesore? What do you have against the EU flag?
They do get made at national level. That's because, for example, what to build is decided at national level, then they bid for EU funding as part of financing of the project.
Basically yoy bid to get some of your money back...
Lol. And in north american train news, canada's newest rail line in only 10km long, was way over budget, years late, and is slower than jogging.
>> A CBC Toronto reporter rode the entire 10.3-kilometre line from east to west Monday morning, finding it took roughly 55 minutes to complete. As a reference point, over 400 runners ran this year's Toronto Marathon 10-kilometre event in under 55 minutes
And yet the Eglinton Crosstown still isn't open...
I'm so close to making a site that just lists every project that's started and finished in the entire time that thing has been "under construction".
A friend of mine works beside one of the Eglinton line sites and called me a few years ago to tell me they were taking down the hoardings... because the hoardings had rotted and needed new plywood and studs.
This headline is a bit odd and doesn't represent the original title nor article content. What does "within budget" mean here? That it costed what the original budget set out to cost? Couldn't find anything related to the budget within the article.
It is mostly within budget, estimated in 2005 were 5.5 billion €, total cost as of today are 5.9 billion €, the difference being largely attributed to the pandemic and later addition of sections.
Sure, I'm just pointing out that this article doesn't follow the HN Guidelines, so I was confused at not seeing any mention of the budget within the article:
> "Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important."
> "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize"
Considering the original title is just the name of the railway, and I do not think “within budget” is editorializing, I think the commenter is being overly pedantic
I opened the article expecting to see news about the budget and how they stayed within it, since that SEEMS like the biggest surprising news in a project like this. How is that overly pedantic?
I understand your expectation. That said, I think it's ok to add detail in commentary when the article doesn't mention it explicitly. So continuing to go upon the point that the article didn't mention the budget makes you seem as pedantic.
Does the site mention the budget and completion time/cost at all? I can't find it from a quick browse/search of the site. It's taking editorializing to a whole new level to add details that are not in the linked article or site at all.
The right thing to do in this case is find the best source for this information (about the budget, schedule and completion time/cost) and make that the URL of the submission. Please email us the best links you know of about this (hn@ycombinator.com) and we'll consider updating the URL.
The site doesn‘t mention it, I got that information from various german announcements. I fear there probably won‘t be an English announcement regarding the budget, though there will be many regarding the tunnel.
€5.5 billion in 2005 is €8 billion in 2025, so it can be either over or under budget depending on how you amortize the costs over the construction period.
To contrast, HS2 here in the UK has cost £40 billion (€45 billion) to date with a further £25 billion (€28 billion) allocated, for a largely superterranean route of 230km.
As badly as HS2 has been run, apart from the tunnel length (where HS2 has not too much more than this project) these projects are night and day different. Not just that HS2 Phase 1a/1b is almost double the length and significantly higher design speed (360km/h vs 250km/h), but they are in a different league in terms of civil engineering from the info I can see - this seems to have less than 80 structures (overpasses, bridges, underpasses etc.) whereas HS2 has 175 bridges and 52 viaducts, and some of those are massive (including the longest railway viaduct in the UK).
Not necessarily because no one lives underground and there are probably no existing things like property, gas lines, electricity lines, sewers, pipelines, roads, etc to avoid or reroute. And very little in the way of habitat.
The longest road tunnel in the world only cost about 100 million in the 90s for 25km so tunneling isn't always a gigantic Big Dig style clusterfuck.
In terms of legal complexity, it's fantastically easier than picking your way across and near thousands of individual plots of very expensive land owned by people with solicitors salivating at the potential fees, expensive private infrastructure, nature reserves and so on.
> The longest road tunnel in the world only cost about 100 million in the 90s for 25km so tunneling isn't always a gigantic Big Dig style clusterfuck.
Big Dig style clusterfuck is because the simplicity and cheapness you're talking about only apply to tunnels through mountains, less so to those underwater and definitely not to tunnels under big cities i.e. land that people live on, which comes with all the complexity.
Yes, and the Austrian route is mostly in that category under the Koralpe Massif rather then the very politically awkward Home Counties (NIMBY Central, and very rich NIMBYs at that).
Hence why tunneling does not necessarily mean a stunningly expensive project. We just hear about the HS2s and Big Digs because they reverberate for decades with all the legal battles.
The big dig is probably the last major success of American infrastructure. Referring to it as a clusterfuck is representative of why we'll never get another one.
Even if the end result ends up being a net positive, even by a wide margin, I think any project that goes over budget by 100% and lands 10 years late does reasonably merit the clusterfuck tag.
The Space Shuttle was one too and that was a marvel. A deathtrap politically-motivated pork-barrel hot-mess of a project, but also a shining black-and-white marvel of a glorious flying space Aga.
> The Space Shuttle was one too and that was a marvel. A deathtrap politically-motivated pork-barrel hot-mess of a project, but also a shining black-and-white marvel of a glorious flying space Aga.
The big dig directly benefits people producing value many, many, many times what the investment cost. Who gives a shit about the initial investment? Voters have proven time and time again that it's easier to lie to them than to get them to earnestly think.
IT is also correct - it costs way too much for what we got. It will be nice for future generations that don't have to pay for it, but it doesn't look like a good investment. Now if the costs were more reasonable it could be a great investment.
I don't see how you're justifying this. Yes the costs overran, but the investment would have been worth it at 4x the end cost. It made boston one of the nicest cities in the country, even if it still sucks ass to drive in.
The costs overran by a lot. Enough that my tiny city in the middle of nowhere would not benefit even though if the costs has been more reaonable we could get something. It might be worth it for Boston - I don't live there, but for a large number of places it makes such a large project something we will never do. The investment at a reasonable price would be wroth for more because it allows similar investments elsewhere and so the total pay off would be much higher.
I live way out in the bumfuck of nowhere, way west of western mass. It's still obvious the big dig was worth it at 4x the cost it actually ran. Yes, even though my taxpayer dollars haven't returned to me in any way I can straightforwardly estimate or point to.
Of course, the big dig is no excuse to not invest outside of the Boston metro area. But that's a completely different argument than saying the investment wasn't worth it.
> The investment at a reasonable price would be wroth for more because it allows similar investments elsewhere and so the total pay off would be much higher.
This is an insane way to reason about investments. No wonder this country is such a shithole. Obviously we should do similar big-dig style investments outside of Boston. Obviously investments like the big dig prompt investments nearby. But individualistic assholes like you force us all to commit suicide instead because you can't use your fucking brain to connect why investment now means we all eat good later.
HS2 also includes major stations - a 6 platform one almost entirely underground in west london, a multi-platform extension in central london, a new station in central birmingham, a new 4 platform outside of Birmingham
Would be interesting to read how the Austrian project was contracted out? It seems in the UK the big construction companies have got very good in extracting a lot of money from customers, wonder if things were different in Austria with this project.
Interesting. In UK, I think the big construction companies would hire these bean-counters then use them to out-manoeuvre the ones that are hired to replace them. Quickly nobody knows what a reasonable price is, and the govmnt has to go with choice of one out of two overpriced bids. (I have no direct experience, this is just what it looks like from an observers perspective)
Obviously this does not give any indication of the complexity of each project. Tunnelling and building railway through a metropolis I would imagine is quite challenging.
Still seems insanely more expensive in the UK. I understand they have a higher cost to carry because their project is indeed more complex, but that's like a almost 13x more expensive variant, while not even being two times the length.
> It is mostly within budget, estimated in 2005 were 5.5 billion €, total cost as of today are 5.9 billion €
That’s incredible! The project managers and contractors should collaborate on a book about how they did it. Heh staying on budget should be the norm and not the exception but irl a 20 year large infra project coming in that close is something to celebrate and learn from.
Started in 1998, apparently without a budget, which came 7 years later, and was completed within…mostly…budget, but not really since it was 7% over budget.
Which also begs the question; why is a railway project page on HN at all, regardless of anything else?
> Crossing the Koralpe massif more quickly and with more comfort. That’s what the future of train travel from Graz to Klagenfurt looks like. With the Koralm Railway, you will arrive at your destination even quicker. The fastest connection will shrink from three hours to just 45 minutes.
There aren't any big mountains between Graz and Klagenfurt. It's an hour on the Autobahn. That it took three hours by train... well, they just had shitty railroad? Best of luck, Southern neighbors!
There is, the Koralpe massif. Previously to get to Klagenfurt from Graz you first had to go north through a somewhat tight valley for about 50km before the train would turn to the south-west towards Klagenfurt, again tough alpine valleys, and with a lot of stops inbetween.
The new route goes south/south-west immediatley, is very straight compared to the old route, and has at most 3 stops.
Actually, the tunnel itself was only 17 years:
1998: Start of construction of the Koralm Railway
2008: Start of construction of the Koralm Tunnel
2018: Breakthrough Koralm Tunnel
2020: Final Koralm tunnel breakthrough
2025: This announcement (https://orf.at/stories/3414173/ in German)
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...
Yeah, the submitted page misses the real news: Ordinary traffic will start tomorrow, Sunday.
Given the terrain and the amount of tunneling needed, completing such a project in 17 years isn't that bad.
Seems software neckbeards on HN are equally as guilty of underestimating the difficulty of other people's work like the managers they complain about.
Yeah, and the last five years has not been drilling, but installing. The last year has been testing and tweaking (accordingt to the ORF article.)
Seems like a great project outcome. Mostly within budget, no political chaos due to delays (AFAICT) and allowing several months for testing before announcing it open.
Just yesterday B1M published an interesting video about the future longest tunnel between Lyon, France and Turin, Italy. It will be more than 50km, deeply below the Alps. The project has finally secured funding, from both countries and EU, and is on track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFrr-L_BcC4
Another one between Italy, Austria and by extension Germany is scheduled for 2032 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel
Isn't Italy a little geologically unstable?
I'd be a bit nervous, going through a long tunnel, in a region known for vulcanism and earthquakes.
Tunnels are actually pretty safe in earthquakes, Japan for example is criss crossed with them.
A tunnel is actually the least likely to shake; if you shake a jello with fruit inside it, the surface moves a lot but the interior fruit won’t move all that much.
Let me introduce you to the Seikan Tunnel [1] between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido in Japan, 53.85km with 23.3km of that under the sea.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikan_Tunnel
Now, that’s scary. I do know that the Japanese have the world’s best anti-earthquake architecture (because they need it), but it’s still scary.
The 57 km Gotthard Base Tunnel has been in operation since 2016. There's also a 3km long tunnel between France and Italy that opened in 1882. Nowadays there's probably hundreds of 1km+ tunnels in the Alps.
Well, from the other responses, it seems the Italian Alps are pretty stable.
Yes but we're drilling holes through them to fix that.
Italy isn't a puny country, it's over 1000kms between Sicily and the Alps (Like LA to Albuquerque), seems the fault lines reaches northern Italy (about 100km from the alps) but the amount of larger quakes seems smaller there.
It is unstable, but (I think) more so in the south. I'm not sure that the Alps region is unstable.
It would be brilliant. Currently the Paris-Milan train line is barely competitive with flying between the two; knocking off 2-3 hours from the trip would make it around 4 hours in total, which is very competitive with flying (1h30 flight, but both CDG and Malpensa are big airports far outside the city, with significant time wasted getting to them, through security, etc). And of course it would be massive for Lyon - Turin, and Lyon - Milan too, where flying wouldn't even make sense any more.
And now that Italy has built a tax haven for HNWI [1], the faster commute will IMO make business boom.
https://nomoretax.eu/italy-a-new-tax-haven/
Booked a trip yesterday, without knowing this has happened. ~1h off my usual trip time, which I got accustomed to in the last two decades. It's extremely awesome!
Its sister tunnel - the Semmering Base Tunnel [0] - is scheduled to be completed in 2030. These two combined greatly reduce the travel time from Vienna to Graz and Klagenfurt (combined 1h 15m time saving).
You don't hear that much about great engineering projects today, yet it's still an incredible feat to build those.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Base_Tunnel
Holy cow... 16.7 Hertz[1] power?
At first that's a really odd sounding choice to this Hoosier. Turns out it's 1/3 of standard 50 Hz in Europe.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_kV_AC_railway_electrificati...
It used to be exactly one third, i.e 16 2/3 so you can have generators on the same axle. However, being exactly one third caused unwanted resonance effects. So with the advent of power electronics it has been slightly shifted to 16.7 Hz. Within tolerance for the motors, but no unwanted resonance anymore.
My high school physics is not sufficient to really understand it.
They actually used that in the US as well for railways. I remember a post years ago on the Classic Computer Mailing List from someone who said that their father had worked on the railways and pointed out that the "high bay" station lighting all ran off 3-phase 16.7Hz power. Apparently it looked okay at ground level but was quite disconcerting when you looked up and saw the lights flickering in patterns of three.
Early AC electrification systems in the US were typically 25Hz, not 16.7Hz. Parts of the northeast corridor still use 25Hz electrification.
I'm trying to find the post, but it was definitely 16.7Hz. I don't know that it was particularly "early" as such, probably the 1950s or so.
> You don't hear that much about great engineering projects today
Here's a great engineering project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_test_tunnel
Serious question about hyperloop trains running in a vacuum. How do you cool the carriages?
The tunnels aren't perfect vacuums
is it though?
I guess sarcasm.
;-)
Austria is the only European country I've been to that doesn't have cheap affordable intercity buses. Seemingly none at all. It was kind of strange... Does anyone know why?
The only options to get around was the expensive train system - and anyone I asked was bewildered why I would want to take a bus.. Maybe next time I should look in to carpooling or some other options. How do low income people get around typically? I need to go to attend a conference, but it's not cheap coming from Asia
EDIT: Seems I was wrong! Sorry. There are buses, (maybe fewer than other countries?)
That part of Europe has historically loved its trains. The train is more than transportation there. It’s an institution and part of the culture. Have you been to a toy store and looked at the precision and cost of the train sets? They don’t just ride the train, the train is part of who they are and what they love, starting when they’re small children. The trains run on-time, they’re clean, and overall they tend to be more modern. In addition, people walk.
Trains are also just more comfortable. More space, more comfortable seats, more space for luggage, you can walk around, better bathrooms, easier to work from especially in the 4 seat configuration, … Personally I would always prefer the train even if it is a bit slower. Once you account for traffic a bus that is scheduled to be faster ends up slower anyway, especially when you really needed it to be on time
Flixbus definitely exists in Austria, but people generally take the train, which is much faster and more comfortable.
There are various discount membership plans available that sometimes pay for themselves after just one round-trip or even one-way ride, and on the most popular connections there's now a private operator competing with the state-owned railway.
A yearly flat-rate ticket for intercity trains is also relatively affordable for EUR 1400 per year.
>Flixbus definitely exists in Austria, but people generally take the train, which is much faster and more comfortable.
Not always true. The Graz-Vienna(Airport) trip is often quicker by flixbus than by OBB train.
Trains in Austria are quite slow , often travelling at the same speed as cars on the highway or often times even slower.
Doesn't Flixbus cap their fleet to 100 km/h? I'd be surprised if that's higher than the average speed of most intercity trains.
Graz–Vienna is admittedly a bit of a special case, since the railway tunnel there isn't finished yet, so I could see cars/buses being faster. (The train makes up for that in views, though ;)
>Doesn't Flixbus cap their fleet to 100 km/h?
And the train is even slower than that. Let that sink in.
>Graz–Vienna is admittedly a bit of a special case
Special case at being ripped off when flights from London, Paris or Berlin across the continent are cheaper than trains from Graz to Vienna.
>The train makes up for that in views, though ;)
It really doesn't when you factor in the ticket prices. Some people who are not tourists use transportation out of necessity to get from A to B as quickly and cheaply as possible, not to do sightseeing and die of old age, so speed and value for money is more critical than what you see out the window. And a significant part of the trip is through tunnels anyway.
And there's only so many times you can see the same hills and houses before it gets repetitive and you go back to your phone. Not to mention if you travel second class, trains on that route are typically full of loud obnoxious people talking on their phone on speaker mode, who don't have courtesy for others so it ruins any enjoyment of sightseeing unless you have good noise cancelling headphones.
I remember the last time I took the train in Austria, between Wien and Linz there was a section where the odometer on the train was showing 220 km/h.
A large part of Austria is the Alps, that poses special challenges for trains. That's why these base tunnels are so important. Funny you ignored the comment about the Semmering tunnel being built, and how it will help with the travel time on that section.
Flights are so cheap because they are subsidized (primarily the fuel), and their CO2 emissions are just swept under the rug. There is also this problem of not having enough high speed cross-country trains, and even if they exist, you usually have to change trains and book tickets separately for each country. The EU has a plan to improve on this in the next 20 years.
> trains on that route are typically full of loud obnoxious people talking on their phone on speaker mode, who don't have courtesy for others so it ruins any enjoyment of sightseeing unless you have good noise cancelling headphones.
Yes, because Ryanair or Wizzair flights never have loud obnoxious people...
> Special case at being ripped off when flights from London, Paris or Berlin across the continent are cheaper than trains from Graz to Vienna.
A "Sparschiene" ticket from Vienna to Graz typically costs between 10€ and 25€. With the Vorteilscard, a regular ticket costs 22€. (I believe the full regular price only exists to rip off tourists :)
>A "Sparschiene" ticket from Vienna to Graz typically costs between 10€ and 25€.
I've never seen it below 19 Euros.
Are Austrian residents excempt from the "full regular price"?
Then it's ripping me off too not just tourists.
Actually the entire country is a ripoff.
> I've never seen it below 19 Euros.
I randomly picked next Wednesday (December 17). There are several offers for 9,90€
> Are Austrian residents excempt from the "full regular price"?
No, and that would be against EU laws.
> No, and that would be against EU laws.
"Reverse discrimination" is generally legal under EU law.
For example, EU law grants the non-EU spouses of EU citizens living in an EU country other than the EU citizen's home country much broader right than the EU citizen's home country otherwise might.
When the tracks allow it, the Railjet goes over 200 km/h. Vienna-Linz only takes 1 hour, which is about twice as fast as by car. Same for the new Koralm track.
Then the tracks are shit if cars can go twice as fast on the same terrain.
I agree that regional trains are often painfully slow. But that's also because there are so many stops.
Vienna-Graz is mainly slow because it has to cross the Semmering mountains and the tracks date back to the K&K days. This will change with the Semmering tunnel.
Oh really? I took the Flixbus from the Czech Republic and is stopped near the border and then after that it was train only. Maybe I ended up in a weird spot then! I just checked and there are indeed buses in-country. Strange that I somehow couldn't find any then
Thank you for the info!
There's definitely bus service (not just Flixbus, also Regiojet and probably others) between Vienna and Prague.
I would blame how Austria, a very small country, is organized into 9 provinces that actually have their own budget and can pass their own laws on some topics.
Rail service is funded at the federal level, so there's less arguing about who pays for what. Bus service, however, is managed by regional transport associations funded by the provinces. This creates disincentives for cross-province bus routes because no single province wants to pay more than its 'fair' share for a service that primarily benefits voters in another province.
Similar dynamics play out at the city/province level. Take Linz, the provincial capital of Upper Austria: the city has had a social democratic (SPÖ) mayor continuously since 1945, while the province has had a conservative (ÖVP) governor for exactly the same period of 80 years. This disincentivizes the province government from helping to fund public transport within or into the city, because it's a win for social democratic city voters, while the more conservative rural voters would rather take the car anyway since they often can't do the whole trip by public transport.
Arguably the reason for the excellent public transport in the city of Vienna is that they are also their own province. Their mayor/governor, who has been a social democrat as well for the last 80 years, always controls both levels of funding.
Almost noone in Austria pays the full price. You either use "Sparschiene" (cheap tickets you book in advance), the Vorteilscard (membership card which gives a 50% discount on every regular ticket) or the various annual or monthly flatrate tickets (e.g. "Klimaticket").
To tell you the truth I was shocked how expensive trains are in whole Europe. Like arent railroads the cheapest and easiest type of road to be built. For real, to get a fair price you would need to book the train like 2 months before the trip.
>Does anyone know why?
Small county with small market monopolized by few politically connected local players in every major sector of the economy who sometimes enjoy regulatory protectionism from the government to keep foreign competitors out and turn a blind eye on racketeering practices.
That's how everything, including stuff made in Austria is more expensive than the same stuff sold in Germany even though wages are lower.
Same issues like in other small markets like New Zeeland except Austria being an EU member should have more pressure from free trade competition but that doesn't always work in favor of the consumers.
> The only options to get around was the expensive train system
can be cheap when you book early. Vienna -> Graz -> Vienna: ~20€
yes, we do, e.g. flixbus. and some others I think. Haven't been traveling for a while by bus around Austria. Apples/Oranges probably, but I do know vienna<->bratislava has like 3-4 different companies operating the same route with similar busses at similar times with different prices.
And talking about apples/oranges, let me add apples/bananas: Vienna to Budapest by train cost a lot when booking via öbb. And not a lot when booking via Regiojet.
The problem is the offers are all scattered around imho.
Yep, single tickets on Austrian ÖBB is not cheap at all without subscriptions or discounts.
Prices are good only if you use it regularly as a commuter via a yearly subscription (Klimaticket), but for one off trips, prices are more expensive than flying.
> but for one off trips, prices are more expensive than flying.
Sparschiene tickets are very cheap. For example, Graz-Vienna (200 km) is between 10€ and 25€. How is that more expensive than flying!?
The trains are pretty cheap, and getting around cities is practically free.
In case you wonder, the Koralm Tunnel has a length of 32.9km
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel
"The Koralm Tunnel opened on the 14th of December 2025" ... wikipedia living in the future past :)
Haha, check who updated this article. Only afterwards I realized we're not past the 14th yet...
Already fixed!
I guess it's the opposite of Futur III:
https://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-ii...
I really waited for this since I was a child. It’s fascinating to see it actually be here.
Me too! But why did you need a quick connection between Klagenfurt and Graz as a child? I would have rather longed for a high speed train between Hermagor and Villach ;-)
What kid doesn't go through a 'train phase?' and a grand plan to improve the railway could be exciting to a child even if it's more spectacle than utility.
Especially since a child will see all the visualizations and such that are put out before work begins.
When I was a kid, in the early 90s, there was a diagram in the local library of the planned Dublin metro. It was, at that point, an old plan, I think from the early 80s.
The third attempt at a Dublin metro just got planning permission a few weeks ago; said planning is now bogged down in a judicial review.
Somewhat envious of Austria’s speed in this sort of thing, really…
At least I got to enjoy the highway connection between Noetsch and Villach when I was a child. Both of those things were big things due to local politics (hi Haider) when I grew up. Practically I did not care. But it was ubiquitous for a while in the news.
I remember reading some time ago that there is a real difficulty running passenger trains and freight trains over the same rails. With freight, you can tolerate bumps at the rail-join points, and freight tends to create such bumps because the heavy loads push the rails slightly out of place. Also, freight routes should be limited to a 2% grade, whereas 4% can be tolerated for the lighter passenger cars. Have these problems been mitigated on the Koralm Railway? Anyone know how?
Interstate 70 in Colorado is very problematic. It is constantly backed up. Colorado needs to learn from this and get serious about rail for shipping and for human travel.
I feel you man. Problem is that would be a major dollar infrastructure problem that would need federal dollars. With a deficit over 40T dollars and political wind blowing against more federal spending generally and Colorado not being a favored state at the moment I'd say the chances are slim of it happening in the next three years. It would be boffo if some liberal corporate billionaire put his shoulder against the project like that enough to inspire a combination of a Colorado bond issue, some state funding and support. The way California handled its high speed rail in Central valley here is not an inspiration I'll tell you that right now. What a fcuk-up and embarrassment that is. What were they thinking?
IF Colorado did this all alone they could potentially avoid a lot of the high costs that result from getting federal dollars. Maybe - Federally funded projects tend to cost 4-7x would they would elsewhere in the world - but nobody really knows why and so it is questionable if Colorado could figure out how to build cheap. Still the potential is there. Colorado's costs would be a lot higher at 7x the cost with federal funding vs doing it all themselves for reasonable costs - but only if they solve all the issues the drive costs up.
Note that I have no confidence Colorado will tackle the issues driving costs up. Several of the known factors are places where politically powerful people (from all sides so don't bring in class warfare) are increasing costs and they let you cut them off. There are a lot of unkonwen issues left after factoring the above, and it is likely they also have politically powerful people increasing costs.
> and political wind blowing against more federal spending generally
Federal non-defense spending in the US is as high as ever (ignoring the brief COVID spike) https://www.cato.org/blog/century-federal-spending-1925-2025
It's going to take 30 years to get a passenger rail connection between boulder and Denver...flat ground, 30 miles, where a train line already is.
The i70 line will never happen.
Looking forward to some nice cabride vids from this line.
My favorite from this part of Europe is the Bernina Express across the alps from Switzerland to Italy.
Definetly worth a slow tv watch if you love trains. (e.g. https://youtu.be/Mw9qiV7XlFs )
Webcams!
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...
This is the first time I've read anything in English about Kärnten and Steiermark. Styria and Carinthia are impressive names. It's as if the Roman Empire were still there.
Considering, both, that most of the austrian states are the successors of duchies that existed already more than 500 years ago in the HRE, and that their governors today are also jokingly called „princes“, your idea is not that far fetched.
Im sure you know about the Styrian Oak?
First, this is a massive accomplishment. When I looked at the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Railway
... it looks like a multi-multi-multi-phase project. Hats off to making this work.
Second, I noticed how long it took to build this tunnel: Koralm Tunnel -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel
It is 33km, and it took from 2008 to 2025 to build it. That is a damn long time! The Toei Oedo line in Tokyo is 40+km and was built in about 10 years. My guess about the wild difference: The geoengineering of the Koralm Tunnel is way more complex, and/or the rock is much harder. Can anyone with experience in this area comment? I would like to learn more. I guess that most of central Tokyo is aluvial plains (Shanghai is similar), so you are basically digging through clay and sand -- easy stuff for modern tunnel boring machines.
The rock they dug through for Koralm is, no hyperbole, about as bad as it gets. It's the gnarliest part of what's under the Alps and required them switching back and forth between boring and blasting.
Being two separate tunnels, it also needs twice as much excavation work. It's also ~25x deeper than Toei Oedo (4000ft vs 157ft). At 4000ft the rock itself is 45-50C!
The Koralm tunnel has a different temperature gradient, as the depth is a consequence of a mountain on top of the tunnel, rather than an increased proximity to the earth crust/core.
32°C is still a significant engineering concern, but not as consequential as 45–50°C.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088677982...
Looks like they reported a peak of 39C in the summer. Either way I figured that would still be pretty miserable, especially if it gets up around 100% humidity.
Assumed they would at least have their own air in the bits that didn't have aircon/ventilation while it was being built. They don't even need to do that anymore! The ventilation systems they used are as advanced and bespoke as the boring machines.
Because they were blasting too, they couldn't utilize full-face pressurization of the entire tunnel to maintain negative pressure to suck all of the fumes, dust, silicates, etc out like they would if it was only boring. That's 1-3kPa, "leaks are jets of air, can pull an airlock door closed hard enough to break bones" territory.
Instead, they have a bunch of dedicated supply and exhaust vents going to the surface (some up to 2m in diameter) and sets of connections between the two tunnels with huge axial fans. It allows them to selectively apply "slight" negative pressure to any of the individual segments when they need to clear them. 50Pa is ~10x what you encounter in a negative pressure highrise. It is described as a "constant slight breeze"
I found this short video on some of the safety features of the finished tunnel. It almost looks "too serious", like something out of a James Bond movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8trt96huf0
A tunnel on the Kurobe gorge railway (originally used for dam contruction, now partially open to tourists) has reached 160 °C (!!) during construction, but has cooled down to manageable 40 °C since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurobe_Seny%C5%8D_Railway
It's also really hard to make the tunnel remain a tunnel over its expected 150 year lifespan - given that it basically runs through a fault line. They had to study and test local geology for about 15 years, build certain sections to expect some movement over time, as well as kit everything out with a lot of sensors.
Overall an amazing achievement, and unsurprising it took this long to figure out!
After seeing some of the safety features in a short video I linked in another comment, I get the impression that this is either going to last much longer than 150 years or something so catastrophic will happen that nothing that could have been built would've persisted.
Good point about "boring vs blasting". I didn't think about that. I remember reading about the longest tunnel in Japan between Honshu and Hokkaido (Seikan Tunnel). I recall that it was entirely hand drilled due to unusual soil conditions. I wonder if that would still be true today with state of the art tunnel boring machines.
Yet another great point. At some of the Toei Oedo stations, you can see a miniature model of the weird overlapping twin tunnel boring machines. So, in theory it is two tunnels, but in practice, it was dug as a single, weird overlapping twin tunnel.You also cannot directly compare a metro line to intercity rail. That line in Tokyo was like what, 20th they built all in the same terrain, they are really good at this by now. Meanwhile, rail tunnels are usually bespoke projects.
It is very strange that countries like Austria, Japan or Switzerland have some of the best rail systems in the world even though their bridge and tunnel requirements are huge. In the US building rail on any terrain seems to be more expensive than basically anything one can build in Austria.
Not strange at all! If you want to go by car you must build even more tunnels. Mountainous regions favor rail just like urban areas do. Furthermore, 19th century investments into rail still pay off in mountainous regions, because once you build a railway bridge or tunnel, you are kind of dumb not to use it. In the USA competition from trucks or cars is much tougher.
Note the US has the number one freight rail system in the world by most measures (there are lots of ways to measure this depending on how you want to abuse the statistics). Some of this is Europe has better river routes to work with (I don't know Asia), but some of this is Europe has focused more on passengers to the point where freight is unable to get through forcing trucks.
And still, to drive on highways in the US is to drive between trucks.
Here is a huge/difficult island with only 55K that has tons of tunnels: https://maps.app.goo.gl/abcnXtRNs9QdVkhC8
Population size, density, terrain, etc. have nothing to do with it.
Geography I guess[1].
Kanto is flat, it's the only region in Japan that could sustain feeding such a massive population and could allow building the first mega city on the planet.
Combine that with the massive engineering and rail experience Japanese have, and it's no surprise imho that combined with favorable geography they could build it quickly.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Topograp...
This is interesting analysis. Many good points. Regarding this comment: "first mega city on the planet": As I understand, in the modern era, Beijing was the first city in the world to have one million people.
Mega cities are 10M+, NYC was the first metropolitan area to cross this milestone and Tokyo the first city proper.
Really? I always thought it was London in 1801. Do you have a link to the data?
I'm guessing geology play a big part - Japan is mostly "new" rock, Alps mostly "old".
Sorry, I don't understand your point. Why is Japan considered "new" and European Alps considered "old"?
The Japanese islands are situated in one of the most geologically active regions on Earth, primarily characterized by multiple subduction zones where four major tectonic plates, producing 'new' Earth, emerge.
The Alps are very, very old in comparison.
Can i please say something about the announcement itself. I marvel at its simplicity and focus on the outcomes & benefits. Especially its lack of trying to link it to a political party / person is very refreshing to see and i wish can be emulated in some of the more developing nations.
For those that can read German, here is a little article that explains some of the obstacles over time:
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000299789/traum-vom-sue...
A map, just put a &^%^$^#@$%! map showing the rail line on your web page. Somewhere. Anywhere!
Its one click further :)
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...
Here are 2 maps
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/de/geschaeftspartner/transport...
https://www.sn.at/panorama/oesterreich/koralmbahn-bringt-sal...
I thought this was about the new base tunnel under the Alps and was very confused for a bit.
The Brenner base tunnel is still under construction.
It turns out, you can build new high speed railways. Take note California!
Eh, not really.
English is not my language, is the headline grammatically correct?
It's a little awkward, but what it's trying to communicate doesn't really work well in one sentence.
As a native US English speaker, I would probably write something like "Austria opens the world's sixth longest railway tunnel: 27 year long project arrives on schedule and under budget."
That's a long headline, though.
Not by a long shot.
While staying within budget for infrastructure developments is no small achievement these days and I applaud them for it, 27 years seems a bit much.
I know its a small nitpick, but I got unreasonably annoyed at the two "Financed by EU fund x" banners having different flag sizes, paddings, fonts etc.
How is there no unifying design language for these?
Do you mean these two?
https://image-service.web.oebb.at/infra/.imaging/default/dam...
https://image-service.web.oebb.at/infra/.imaging/default/dam...
Yup. Why are the paddings, fonts and colors all over the place? Just decide on one!
NextGenerationEU
Is there any design? It's just the flag and a title + subtitle.
Also, the EU is the most efficient government in terms of overhead, and having seen some of it up close not wasting time or money on "unifying design languages" for every single funding billboard is very much EU style. Just copy-paste by some local authority in Powerpoint in most cases, I bet.
Looking at the modern iterations of the program guidelines for these programs, especially [1] and [2], you basically have to use the flag, the text over, under or to either side of the flag (your choice) in one of 6 fonts (Arial, Auto, Calibri, Garamond, Tahoma, Trebuchet, Ubuntu or Verdana), and have some rules for minimum distance, minimum size and proportionality. They absolutely could have made those two match visually. But each program offers premade banners that match the design criteria, and those don't always harmonize. As you say, nobody cared
1: https://hadea.ec.europa.eu/programmes/connecting-europe-faci...
2: https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/3192a0ef-6bda...
3: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/information-sources/log...
What are the funding billboards for, anyway? They're an eyesore, and it's all paid by us EU taxpayers anyway. They should say "financed by you", or better yet, not exist to begin with.
it's all paid by us EU taxpayers anyway
That's simply not true, the EU subsidy budget is dwarfed by each country's national budget. From https://eubudget.europarl.europa.eu/en/how-it-works/ :
The EU budget [..] accounts annually for around 1% of the EU's GNI (gross national income), or around €160-180 billion. National public spending by EU countries averages nearly 50% of their respective GNI.
> That's simply not true
I'm not sure I understand your comment tbh. Where does the money come from, if not from EU taxpayers?
> the EU subsidy budget is dwarfed by each country's national budget.
My comment had nothing to do with that.
The page you linked has a question "How is the budget funded", which lists the revenues:
> Another difference between the EU budget and national budgets is that the EU lacks direct taxation power to finance its budget and instead relies on revenues called “own resources”.
> These revenues are:
> - Custom duties on imports into the EU
> - A small part of the VAT collected by each EU country
> - A contribution based on the amount of non-recycled plastic waste in each EU country
> - National contribution from each EU country based on its gross national income (GNI). All member states contribute according to their share in the combined GNI of EU countries. This is the largest share of the own resources.
I'd say all of that comes from the EU taxpayers.
I mean, see Brexit; there's a bit of a "what have the Romans ever done for us" aspect to a lot of euroscepticism. Some of the more Brexit-y regions were also amongst the poorest, and thus the largest beneficiaries of EU funding (eg https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/26/cornwall-fea...)
The idea is to show people the benefits of the EU, essentially. It is unclear how well it works.
Cornwall, say, had reason to feel hard done by; it was the second-poorest NUTS 3 region in Northern Europe. It's just that they were directing their ire at Europe, and not at the national government where it belonged. All but one of the ten poorest NUTS 3 regions in Northern Europe were in the UK pre-Brexit (along with the very richest NUTS 3 region, inner London), and there's a reason for that.
(Of course, the problem is now solved by Brexit; as the UK no longer participates in Eurostat, _none_ of the poorest regions in the Eurostat statistics are in the UK!)
Yes, I remember Wales received a lot of EU funding for infrastructure and there used to be those "funded by the EU" signs everywhere. They voted in favour of Brexit.
I think this sort of things does little to convince people. The road network was there and working before the EU, it is still there and working now.
Especially, people were well aware that the UK was a consistent net contributor to the EU budget so knew that EU funding for infrastructure was not reallly a benefit.
It was still a benefit for Wales.
Yes, the UK government was a net contributor, but the UK government likes to concentrate its spending around London.
EU funding was specifically given out to poorer regions (like Wales) that were long neglected by their national governments.
Well, except that in the UK the devolved nations (Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland) receive more funding from the government than England does. For instance, Wales received 20% more money per person than England does.
Devolution itself also means that, effectively, the UK government is in charge of England while the devolved governments are in charge of their respective nations, so just looking at which projects the UK government funds is misleading.
So, it is not accurate to say that regions are neglected, and you might even argue that ultimately the South East of England and England overall fund the whole country...
Overall, I do not know if that was specifically a benefit for Wales. Obviously in the end the Welsh decided that the cons outweighted the pros, anyway.
They put them up with and without the EU funding info, right? Here most is not EU funded, but there are still signs, because how else do you know what is going on? Or are big construction projects completely unsigned where you live?
They used to be unsigned. I agree it's good for the funding to be transparent, but a government and/or EU-wide website would be fine to list the supported projects. No need for ugly signs.
I (pro-EU Austrian) think they are great, as they show that we also get huge benefits through our EU membership and that we can do such enormous megaprojects only together
Also, eyesore? What do you have against the EU flag?
> Also, eyesore? What do you have against the EU flag?
I like the EU flag. I do not like the billboards. They just do not look good. Plant an actual flag there instead? I'd prefer that!
Austria is a net contributor to the EU, contributing 30% more than it receives (very roughly contributes 3 billion and receives 2).
Now I am sure that Austria has benefited from EU membership, but this is not one of the areas.
As an Austrian, the benefit is that the funding decision didn't get made at the Austrian level.
The funds are less useful if they're in the hands of our government.
They do get made at national level. That's because, for example, what to build is decided at national level, then they bid for EU funding as part of financing of the project.
Basically yoy bid to get some of your money back...
Yes - the final decision whether the money gets spent is at the EU level.
Which is much better than at the Austrian politics level.
One can only bring a horse to water...
Austria is probably giving EU more money than it receives, so how is that going to help?
But would Austria have used its money for a European transit corridor if not for the EU?
Lol. And in north american train news, canada's newest rail line in only 10km long, was way over budget, years late, and is slower than jogging.
>> A CBC Toronto reporter rode the entire 10.3-kilometre line from east to west Monday morning, finding it took roughly 55 minutes to complete. As a reference point, over 400 runners ran this year's Toronto Marathon 10-kilometre event in under 55 minutes
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/finch-west-lrt-first-...
And yet the Eglinton Crosstown still isn't open... I'm so close to making a site that just lists every project that's started and finished in the entire time that thing has been "under construction".
A friend of mine works beside one of the Eglinton line sites and called me a few years ago to tell me they were taking down the hoardings... because the hoardings had rotted and needed new plywood and studs.
This headline is a bit odd and doesn't represent the original title nor article content. What does "within budget" mean here? That it costed what the original budget set out to cost? Couldn't find anything related to the budget within the article.
It is mostly within budget, estimated in 2005 were 5.5 billion €, total cost as of today are 5.9 billion €, the difference being largely attributed to the pandemic and later addition of sections.
Sure, I'm just pointing out that this article doesn't follow the HN Guidelines, so I was confused at not seeing any mention of the budget within the article:
> "Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important."
> "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize"
Agreed, it was just important to me to point it out, since staying within such a massive budget on such a long timeline is a rare achievement.
Considering the original title is just the name of the railway, and I do not think “within budget” is editorializing, I think the commenter is being overly pedantic
I opened the article expecting to see news about the budget and how they stayed within it, since that SEEMS like the biggest surprising news in a project like this. How is that overly pedantic?
I understand your expectation. That said, I think it's ok to add detail in commentary when the article doesn't mention it explicitly. So continuing to go upon the point that the article didn't mention the budget makes you seem as pedantic.
There are non-English articles on the budget too.
https://orf.at/stories/3414173/
Their point was completely valid. HN policies are what help keep this place sane.
I was curious about the forecasting success story here too. The German LOK article is better in this regard: https://www.lok-report.de/news/europa/item/62410-oesterreich...
You're using a strange definition of "within". It's 7% over.
In a world where large infrastructure projects regularly exceed their budget by 100-1000%, 7% is huge.
It is important to show people that that is possible in government projects.
If you find a more concise way of saying „with unusually small overrun of it‘s budget“ tell me.
Also there were sections added after the initial estimate.
Does the site mention the budget and completion time/cost at all? I can't find it from a quick browse/search of the site. It's taking editorializing to a whole new level to add details that are not in the linked article or site at all.
The right thing to do in this case is find the best source for this information (about the budget, schedule and completion time/cost) and make that the URL of the submission. Please email us the best links you know of about this (hn@ycombinator.com) and we'll consider updating the URL.
The site doesn‘t mention it, I got that information from various german announcements. I fear there probably won‘t be an English announcement regarding the budget, though there will be many regarding the tunnel.
"almost" is the word
"only slightly over budget"
€5.5 billion in 2005 is €8 billion in 2025, so it can be either over or under budget depending on how you amortize the costs over the construction period.
To contrast, HS2 here in the UK has cost £40 billion (€45 billion) to date with a further £25 billion (€28 billion) allocated, for a largely superterranean route of 230km.
As badly as HS2 has been run, apart from the tunnel length (where HS2 has not too much more than this project) these projects are night and day different. Not just that HS2 Phase 1a/1b is almost double the length and significantly higher design speed (360km/h vs 250km/h), but they are in a different league in terms of civil engineering from the info I can see - this seems to have less than 80 structures (overpasses, bridges, underpasses etc.) whereas HS2 has 175 bridges and 52 viaducts, and some of those are massive (including the longest railway viaduct in the UK).
> this seems to have less than 80 structures (overpasses, bridges, underpasses etc.) whereas HS2 has 175 bridges and 52 viaducts.
Doesn't tunnel beat any of those structures in terms of cost/complexity?
Not necessarily because no one lives underground and there are probably no existing things like property, gas lines, electricity lines, sewers, pipelines, roads, etc to avoid or reroute. And very little in the way of habitat.
The longest road tunnel in the world only cost about 100 million in the 90s for 25km so tunneling isn't always a gigantic Big Dig style clusterfuck.
In terms of legal complexity, it's fantastically easier than picking your way across and near thousands of individual plots of very expensive land owned by people with solicitors salivating at the potential fees, expensive private infrastructure, nature reserves and so on.
> The longest road tunnel in the world only cost about 100 million in the 90s for 25km so tunneling isn't always a gigantic Big Dig style clusterfuck.
Big Dig style clusterfuck is because the simplicity and cheapness you're talking about only apply to tunnels through mountains, less so to those underwater and definitely not to tunnels under big cities i.e. land that people live on, which comes with all the complexity.
Yes, and the Austrian route is mostly in that category under the Koralpe Massif rather then the very politically awkward Home Counties (NIMBY Central, and very rich NIMBYs at that).
Hence why tunneling does not necessarily mean a stunningly expensive project. We just hear about the HS2s and Big Digs because they reverberate for decades with all the legal battles.
> Big Dig style clusterfuck.
The big dig is probably the last major success of American infrastructure. Referring to it as a clusterfuck is representative of why we'll never get another one.
Even if the end result ends up being a net positive, even by a wide margin, I think any project that goes over budget by 100% and lands 10 years late does reasonably merit the clusterfuck tag.
The Space Shuttle was one too and that was a marvel. A deathtrap politically-motivated pork-barrel hot-mess of a project, but also a shining black-and-white marvel of a glorious flying space Aga.
> The Space Shuttle was one too and that was a marvel. A deathtrap politically-motivated pork-barrel hot-mess of a project, but also a shining black-and-white marvel of a glorious flying space Aga.
https://archive.org/details/gil-scott-heron-whitey-on-the-mo...
The big dig directly benefits people producing value many, many, many times what the investment cost. Who gives a shit about the initial investment? Voters have proven time and time again that it's easier to lie to them than to get them to earnestly think.
IT is also correct - it costs way too much for what we got. It will be nice for future generations that don't have to pay for it, but it doesn't look like a good investment. Now if the costs were more reasonable it could be a great investment.
I don't see how you're justifying this. Yes the costs overran, but the investment would have been worth it at 4x the end cost. It made boston one of the nicest cities in the country, even if it still sucks ass to drive in.
The costs overran by a lot. Enough that my tiny city in the middle of nowhere would not benefit even though if the costs has been more reaonable we could get something. It might be worth it for Boston - I don't live there, but for a large number of places it makes such a large project something we will never do. The investment at a reasonable price would be wroth for more because it allows similar investments elsewhere and so the total pay off would be much higher.
I live way out in the bumfuck of nowhere, way west of western mass. It's still obvious the big dig was worth it at 4x the cost it actually ran. Yes, even though my taxpayer dollars haven't returned to me in any way I can straightforwardly estimate or point to.
Of course, the big dig is no excuse to not invest outside of the Boston metro area. But that's a completely different argument than saying the investment wasn't worth it.
> The investment at a reasonable price would be wroth for more because it allows similar investments elsewhere and so the total pay off would be much higher.
This is an insane way to reason about investments. No wonder this country is such a shithole. Obviously we should do similar big-dig style investments outside of Boston. Obviously investments like the big dig prompt investments nearby. But individualistic assholes like you force us all to commit suicide instead because you can't use your fucking brain to connect why investment now means we all eat good later.
HS2 does not go through the complex geology of the Alps.
HS2 also includes major stations - a 6 platform one almost entirely underground in west london, a multi-platform extension in central london, a new station in central birmingham, a new 4 platform outside of Birmingham
Would be interesting to read how the Austrian project was contracted out? It seems in the UK the big construction companies have got very good in extracting a lot of money from customers, wonder if things were different in Austria with this project.
Austria tends to have pretty rigorous bean-counters overseeing budgets like this, especially when it comes to public-good services such as railway.
It is one of the things that makes living here so .. infuriating at times .. but also .. rewarding.
Interesting. In UK, I think the big construction companies would hire these bean-counters then use them to out-manoeuvre the ones that are hired to replace them. Quickly nobody knows what a reasonable price is, and the govmnt has to go with choice of one out of two overpriced bids. (I have no direct experience, this is just what it looks like from an observers perspective)
In contrast, the 2nd Ave Subway extension here in NY cost $4.5 billion for 2.9 km
7x longer for 11x the cost seems pretty good all things considered.
Always thought it seemed like a waste to not also dig out a bunch of storage while we're down there. I'm sure there are good reasons we don't
It's not seven times longer. The Austrian line is 130km with 50km of tunnels.
Obviously this does not give any indication of the complexity of each project. Tunnelling and building railway through a metropolis I would imagine is quite challenging.As far as I can see, the 6bn is _just_ for the big 30km tunnel? Presumably the rest of it cost more.
Still seems insanely more expensive in the UK. I understand they have a higher cost to carry because their project is indeed more complex, but that's like a almost 13x more expensive variant, while not even being two times the length.
HS2 is five sets of twin bore tunnels, so there is more "tunnel per tunnel"
Sounds like you might want to build the whole HS2 underground to save money.
Yeah because it would be extremely expensive and we don't need it.
> It is mostly within budget, estimated in 2005 were 5.5 billion €, total cost as of today are 5.9 billion €
That’s incredible! The project managers and contractors should collaborate on a book about how they did it. Heh staying on budget should be the norm and not the exception but irl a 20 year large infra project coming in that close is something to celebrate and learn from.
Is inflation included? Otherwise 5,5 billion in 2005 is >8billion in 2025.
Probably, else the sum wouldn't have worked out the way it did, if we are talking about 5.9€ million as of today.
Started in 1998, apparently without a budget, which came 7 years later, and was completed within…mostly…budget, but not really since it was 7% over budget.
Which also begs the question; why is a railway project page on HN at all, regardless of anything else?
Is anyone going to explain what justifies the down votes or is this just Reddit tier mobbing now?
It was indeed built within 27 years:
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...
> Crossing the Koralpe massif more quickly and with more comfort. That’s what the future of train travel from Graz to Klagenfurt looks like. With the Koralm Railway, you will arrive at your destination even quicker. The fastest connection will shrink from three hours to just 45 minutes.
There aren't any big mountains between Graz and Klagenfurt. It's an hour on the Autobahn. That it took three hours by train... well, they just had shitty railroad? Best of luck, Southern neighbors!
There is, the Koralpe massif. Previously to get to Klagenfurt from Graz you first had to go north through a somewhat tight valley for about 50km before the train would turn to the south-west towards Klagenfurt, again tough alpine valleys, and with a lot of stops inbetween. The new route goes south/south-west immediatley, is very straight compared to the old route, and has at most 3 stops.
> [...] and with a lot of stops inbetween. The new route [...] has at most 3 stops.
I think this explains a lot. Adding a couple of stops adds a lot of time to the total!
> they just had shitty railroad
The terrain is just hard railroad had do huge detour on this section
Look at map: https://mapy.com/en/turisticka?x=15.0703419&y=46.7076432&z=1...
Passes in those mountains are only ~1200m above valley level (~1650 abs). Yeah, perfectly ok to run railroad there.
Your autobahn climbs 600m on this section (to 1050m absolute) - it's way to high for railway to be effective.