Rapid transit
Vienna metro expansion strikes the right chord
Long considered a model city for urban transport, Vienna continues to build capacity into its already dense network. Erwin Reidinger looks at the fourth phase expansion of the metro network and considers the prospects for further investment.
NLIKE some other European capitals which began developing their metro networks in the 19th century, Vienna was a latecomer to the metro scene, not opening its first lines until the 1970s. The network has since been consistently expanded to now reach 74.6km across five lines which carried 444 million passengers in 2012.
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This expansion continues apace under the metro’s fourth construction phase which commenced in 2010. The first project to be implemented is a further extension of Line U2 from Aspernstrasse to Seestadt. The work follows a previous extension from Schottenring to Aspernstrasse which provided a third crossing of the River Danube and was completed in 2010, with Stadion station opening in May 2008 ahead of the European Football Championships which were held that summer in Austria and Switzerland. The latest addition to the line is a completely elevated section which is due to open in October and will have an interchange with Austrian Federal Railways’ (ÖBB) Stadlau - Marchegg line at the new Aspern station. This station is located east of the present S80 terminus at Hausfeldstrasse which will also be extended to the new station. Seestadt will serve a new urban development on the site of an abandoned airfield which will eventually house
20,000 people as well as new businesses that will employ 15,000. The whole area is under construction at present and will be completed in stages up to 2020. A southern extension of Line U1 is another project included in the fourth expansion phase. Initially the extension was planned from Reumannplatz to Rothneusiedl, the planned site of a new urban development. However, due to high costs this project has been scaled back to an extension to Oberlaa which is currently served by tram Line 67 and will be abandoned once the metro extension opens in 2017. Work on the project is underway with the first section from Reumannplatz set to run in a tunnel and reach the surface north of Alaudagasse from which the line will be elevated. In order to retain the option to build a branch to Rothneusiedl at a later date, Alaudagasse station is designed to act as a future junction. The third project of phase four is another extension of Line U2, this time from the current city-centre terminus at Karlsplatz to Gudrunstrasse, south of Vienna’s new main station which is due to be completed in 2015. While construction of the new metro link will not start before 2019, there is considerable uncertainty about this project because the alignment has not yet been decided. There is a possibility that it might be abandoned in favour of tram lines. Although the Vienna metro is quite
young some sections are already in need of major refurbishment. The Reumannplatz - Stephansplatz section of Line U1, which opened in 1978, was the first section to be rebuilt and was closed for six weeks during the summer of 2012 for the work to be carried out. This was necessary to renew the concrete trackbed and to add some new points at Taubstummengasse. Signalling equipment has also been upgraded to the standards of the
network’s more recent lines.
Line U4 is also
showing its age. It was built using the alignment of a former city railway line and suffers from frequent electrical and mechanical failures. However, it has not yet been
decided whether
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