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.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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").
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.
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.
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 ;-)
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.
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?
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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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".
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.
> 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.
flowerthoughts|2 months ago
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...
usr1106|2 months ago
alephnerd|2 months ago
Seems software neckbeards on HN are equally as guilty of underestimating the difficulty of other people's work like the managers they complain about.
buybackoff|2 months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFrr-L_BcC4
sofixa|2 months ago
seqastian|2 months ago
groestl|2 months ago
dachris|2 months ago
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
mikewarot|2 months ago
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...
ekjhgkejhgk|2 months ago
Here's a great engineering project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_test_tunnel
contrarian1234|2 months ago
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?)
lxgr|2 months ago
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.
b0vinat--|2 months ago
mschwaig|2 months ago
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.
letn1|2 months ago
john61|2 months ago
can be cheap when you book early. Vienna -> Graz -> Vienna: ~20€
spacechild1|2 months ago
tomw1808|2 months ago
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.
ErroneousBosh|2 months ago
jack_tripper|2 months ago
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.
roflmaostc|2 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel
tomw1808|2 months ago
unknown|2 months ago
[deleted]
the_mitsuhiko|2 months ago
spacechild1|2 months ago
igogq425|2 months ago
primes4all|2 months ago
tacker2000|2 months ago
mattcantstop|2 months ago
jeingham|2 months ago
IncreasePosts|2 months ago
The i70 line will never happen.
lcuff|2 months ago
joushx|2 months ago
PeterStuer|2 months ago
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 )
djoldman|2 months ago
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...
throwaway2037|2 months ago
... 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.
monster_truck|2 months ago
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!
DoktorL|2 months ago
nasmorn|2 months ago
epolanski|2 months ago
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...
e12e|2 months ago
hans_castorp|2 months ago
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000299789/traum-vom-sue...
f1codz|2 months ago
TheAtomic|2 months ago
erikvanoosten|2 months ago
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...
tacker2000|2 months ago
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/de/geschaeftspartner/transport...
https://www.sn.at/panorama/oesterreich/koralmbahn-bringt-sal...
apexalpha|2 months ago
MadDemon|2 months ago
davidu|2 months ago
jeingham|2 months ago
saubeidl|2 months ago
How is there no unifying design language for these?
throwaway2037|2 months ago
https://image-service.web.oebb.at/infra/.imaging/default/dam...
https://image-service.web.oebb.at/infra/.imaging/default/dam...
brnt|2 months ago
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.
DeathArrow|2 months ago
unknown|2 months ago
[deleted]
alberto_ol|2 months ago
showerst|2 months ago
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.
groestl|2 months ago
sandworm101|2 months ago
>> 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-...
jasona123|2 months ago
franciscop|2 months ago
fzeindl|2 months ago
RicoElectrico|2 months ago
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...
unknown|2 months ago
[deleted]
_jzlw|2 months ago
[deleted]
upvotenow|2 months ago
[deleted]
ITniggah|2 months ago
[deleted]
tasuki|2 months ago
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!
syberspace|2 months ago
febusravenga|2 months ago
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.