SPIEGEL MOBIL: Billions Upon Billions for Berlin-Munich Bullet Train

International

27.10.2011

Germany's Longest Subway
Billions Upon Billions for Berlin-Munich Bullet Train

By Christian Wüst

PHOTO GALLERY

3. Part: The One-Size-Fits-All Rail Line

Still, it is precisely this ability to carry freight traffic that has made the new line so expensive.

Heavy freight trains weigh roughly five times as much as full passenger trains, which means that they can only handle slight inclines. Indeed, lines on which freight trains can travel without requiring two locomotives cannot exceed a barely perceptible incline of 1.25 percent. Such is the case, for example, with lines that traverse the Alps.

On the other hand, routes designed to accommodate an ICE train traveling at 300 kilometers per hour can have only barely perceptible curves.

Satisfying these two requirements produces a line that slices straight through the landscape without inclines or curves. And this is also the reason that the segment passing through the Thuringian Forest, largely underground, could be referred to as Germany's longest subway.

It makes much more sense to design express lines exclusively for passenger trains, as was the case with France's TGV lines and the new German route between Cologne and the Rhine/Main region near Frankfurt. With inclines of up to 3.5 -- or even 4 percent, in Germany -- these lines can pass through mountainous regions while requiring relatively few tunnels. On the other hand, freight trains, which already travel at slower speeds, continue to use the old tracks.

Bending the Railway Rules

The supposed one-size-fits-all line through Thuringia also has the flaw that it failed, by a small margin, to actually guarantee that it would not exceed the maximum incline of 1.25 percent. In four locations, the planners chose a 2 percent gradient to avoid driving costs up even further.

But what happens if a freight train has to stop and then start up again along one of these segments?

Olaf Drescher is the overall director of the VDE 8 project. When confronted with this question, he reflects for a moment before saying: "Then we might have a problem."

The problem would be that the train would be stuck because the wheels of the locomotive would spin in place. The engineer would then have to back the train onto a flatter segment and make another attempt -- which isn't exactly the kind of maneuver one wants to see on a line where ICE trains are traveling at 300 kilometers per hour.

Drescher insists that this sort of horror scenario is merely a "theoretical case." He points out that the segments with the 2 percent gradients are "short ramps" and that signaling technology can be used to ensure that "trains do not come to a stop there."

However, one can't impose a categorical ban on bringing trains to a full stop on rail lines -- and Drescher knows this. But despite the fact that the four steeper segments along the route offer critics plenty of talking points, their construction is no longer up for debate.

In contrast to the Stuttgart 21 project, more than half of the total budget of 10 billion has already been spent, and most of the structures have been built or are almost complete. Indeed, the oldest bridge along the new route has already been standing for 10 years.

Questionable Investment or Cultural Asset?

Drescher is sitting in a visitors' center along the new railroad line south of Leipzig, playing host to a group of Japanese civil engineers. Sandwiches are served and a Deutsche Bahn official gives a PowerPoint presentation. When trains start running on the new tracks in 2017, 30 million cubic meters (1.06 billion cubic feet) of earth and stone will have been moved and 4.5 million cubic meters of concrete will have been used.

Drescher mentions the beauty of the engineering structures, including the graceful bridge piers, which are also meant to serve as a sort of trademark for the new line.

Defining infrastructure as a cultural asset is a way of looking at things that even some critics share. In fact, a KCW expert recently described Germany's expensive ICE lines as the "Neuschwanstein of the Modern Age" in reference to the 19th-century Bavarian castle that has become an international symbol of German engineering -- as well as a renowned wihte elephant for its enormous cost.

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Part 1: Billions Upon Billions for Berlin-Munich Bullet Train

Part 2: Fast, But Perhaps Not Fast Enough

Part 3: The One-Size-Fits-All Rail Line