in The morning, give the SBB the winning project for the Expansion of the railway station Stadelhofen known. The city of Zurich’s train station is to get a fourth Track. The extension is likely to cost around 900 million Swiss francs.

the beginning of the year have launched the SBB the project competition for the extension. Eight architectural firms were invited. Including that of the Spanish-Swiss star architect Santiago Calatrava, who designed the existing train station Stadelhofen. In addition, there are two other Teams that are likely to be known to the wider Public: that of the Frenchman Dominique Perrault, whose most famous work is the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and the office of the late Theo Hotz, who among other things, the new police and justice center or the Sihlcity designed.

Originally four tracks planned

the Expansion of The Stadelhofens is overdue, the capacity limit is already exceeded. The Stadelhofen is now daily almost 83’000 incoming and outgoing passengers, the fourth-largest train station in Zurich, and one of the biggest bottlenecks accross the regional lines. The reason: in 1990, he was arrested with a “birth defect” in operation costs, he has only three and no fourth Track. The consequence of this is that any interference with swirls of the roadmap by each other, and commuter part to the Eastern part of Switzerland upset.

The bottleneck is to blame for the policies of the 1970s and 80s, who had slimmed down after the massive failure of the U-Bahn-vote (1973) the plans of a Stadelhofens with four tracks and a second riesbach tunnel, in order to save 50 million Swiss francs. Therefore, today, the trains that want to go to deep wells, to have to cross, the track of the city of inwardly moving trains. In addition, there is no full-fledged double-track route between Stadelhofen and Tiefenbrunnen.

For years, the policy is trying to correct this from today’s optics looked bad planning. A difficult one, revolves around two Central questions. Who pays? And where the Track is?

The voting public no

in 2014, said rejected the voting citizens, citizens voting with a two-thirds majority, a cantonal popular initiative of the VCS, which had required, of the Canton should take the money for the Expansion following surge. With good reason: Only a few months before the vote on the VCS-Initiative, the Swiss voters had approved a new rail-financing mechanism. Last June, the national Council has called for a nearly 13 billion Swiss francs, a big package for the rail expansion in 2035. Thus, the conversion of the Stadelhofens is to be financed.

The two discussed variants in the referendum campaign in the year 2014.

In the vote fight to the Stadelhofen Initiative was also discussed as a fourth Track could be realized. A difficult task, since the station was enormous, built compact in the mountain under the High Promenade. The government proposed to build a fourth Track, 30 to 40 metres behind the present-day railway station wall, the passage over the shop accessed. The VCS had the idea to build the Track 4, two floors below the third Track.

Eight proposals are received by the SBB. You decide is not for those of Santiago Calatrava, but for one of the other seven projects, could be threatened with legal arguments. The station is one of Calatrava’s early works, and today stands under monument protection. The star architect had submitted at the beginning of the year, the Federal administrative court a complaint against the invitation to tender. He fears that “his” train station could be disfigured, and expressed copyright concerns. Calatrava was of the opinion that the order would be directly to him will be awarded. In March, he withdrew the complaint, however. His lawyer, however, had open, whether it could come at a later time to a process. Another Team should get the encouragement, the lawyer in March, would be Calatrava and his office is the project exactly, but open-ended check. And: “From our point of view, it is hard to imagine that someone other than Santiago Calatrava, to make this extension.”

(sip)

Created: 18.11.2019, 18:20 PM