alt Hacker NewsKoralm Railway
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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.
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.
In case you wonder, the Koralm Tunnel has a length of 32.9km
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?)
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 really waited for this since I was a child. It’s fascinating to see it actually be here.
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 )
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.
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.
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!
It turns out, you can build new high speed railways. Take note California!
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.
I thought this was about the new base tunnel under the Alps and was very confused for a bit.
English is not my language, is the headline grammatically correct?
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?
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-...
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.
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> 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!
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...