A German high-speed railway project likened to HS2 has been delayed after engineers incorrectly laid 1,000km (620 miles) of cables.
Stuttgart 21, an €11bn (£9.4bn) mega-project that was scheduled to open in 2019, will not open for at least another five years as the cables need to be replaced, German media reported on Wednesday.
OK, the original error, but then 5 years to correct it?
What happened to German efficiency?
Presumably the mistake has been extremely well documented …
The cables were laid efficiently and no doubt will be taken up and relaid efficiently. No doubt after triple checking the route.
There’s lots of examples of the Germans not being, but the real divide everywhere in the world is public vs private. Kraftwerk, Siemens, BASF and Mercedes are all private. The massive success of West Germany was that they had people like Adenauer, Erhard and Kohl who were politically like Mrs Thatch. It’s not about good government, it’s about less government.
Brandenberg Airport (state) has been a fiasco. The railways are notoriously bad (state). And let’s not forget production of Panzers vs T-21s, the last time that you could say that a Russian vehicle beat a German one.
Stuttgart station rebuild. I recall telling my German colleagues that AEG advertised in the UK as “Advanced Engineering from Germany”, they laughed and explained that it really stands for “Auspacken, Einschalten, Gebrochen” – unpack it, plug it in, it’s broken!
I think I have a clue, Julia:
Cem Özdemir, the state president of Baden-Württemberg
Import ze Third World…
Good grief, look at this for a career:
Which bits of that inspire anyone with faith in his ability to be responsible for a major engineering project?
The last legitimately elected German government was formed in 1933.
When was the last time the UK had a technology minister with a STEM degree?
“ Protestant University of Applied Sciences” sounds ok.
Six months to re-lay them, but only after four-and-a-half years of legal wrangling over who is to pay for it!
At €11B it’s less than 10% of the cost of HS2, & it’s mainly underground in a city/suburban areas. 57km of new lines with 30km of tunnels.
Looks like a bargin to me
HS2 could have been delivered a lot cheaper.
125 year standard: The dept of transport decided the whole thing had to be built to the 125 year standard, meaning that each part needed a design life of 125 years before major overall and renovation. This included the bat tunnel. It could have been built as a 5 million mesh over the rail track. Instead, 200 million plus structure designed to last 125 years. Hopefully the bats do not decided to fly to another area.
High speed: Designed to support 250 mph trains with some future proofing if faster trains become available. This meant the track had to be very straight and very level. This meant there was little to no flexibility in the route. This meant viaducts, and lots of over bridges (loads of roads were in the way) and all of that needed to be built to the 125 year standard. If we had just gone for a 160-180 mph train then you could have had a cheaper track with more flexibility in the route.
European loading gauge: HS2 uses the European loading gauge instead of the British loading gauge. Added cost to the system. The reason? Someone thought there would be a market for Eurostar trains from Manchester to Brussels. Something to do with peak oil and air travel set to become mega expensive and hence holiday makers would need a high speed alternative. Added unnecessary cost to the project.
Noise and visual abatement: Tory backbenchers decided that they did not want to see or hear the trains travelling through the cotswolds.
The basic idea was fine – build a dedicated express line to allow the existing lines to be used more efficiently.
A Shinkansen, you mean. Mmm. Pity no-one had ever thought of that before, or implemented it, to show how it’s done, where it’s useful, over which distances with which load factors, and where it isn’t.
The basic idea was wrong, if capacity was the aim, a 160mph 4-track mainline would have provided double the capacity for as v quarter of the cost. And it doesn’t even join up with HS1!
Very high speed rail has quite a restricted ‘sweet spot’, roughly 200-500 miles. HS2 is too short to gain any useful benefit, and even if it ran all the way to Edinburgh and joined on to HS1 to provide through trains to Frankfurt (linking two banking centres), it couldn’t compete with air travel over that distance.
“The basic idea was fine – build a dedicated express line to allow the existing lines to be used more efficiently.”
I keep hearing this “we can run other services” but then it’s all *crickets* when I ask what services they want to run.
The fact is, HS2 can only remove passengers that want to go all the way from London to Birmingham or the other way around. The people getting on at Rugby to go to Coventry can’t. And no-one can tell me how many there are that want to do the whole trip.
I suspect the whole project just started with engineers wanting a new toy to play with and then coming up with a justification.
Germany does not make small mistakes
Nein, ve do not make small mistakes.
Das reich.
S21 has been the most phenomenal balls-up.
The priblems really started before the first spade hit the ground. In 2010 a lady walking her dog through the Schlosspark and saw some guys cutting down the ancient elm trees.
When she asked what was going on, they told her it was nevessary to dig the S21 tunnel.
Hour later: huge crowds in the park, people chaining themselves to the trees, police in riot gear and water cannon. Place was a shambles.
Cost the CDU the local elections. Greens still in charge in Stuttgart and in coalition in Baden Wurtemberg.
Compromise was that they would replant the trees – at enormous expense.
The project is cursed.
Are the Greens like the socialist/Muslim antisemites like in the UK? I assume they’re not led by a gay Jew because I think the UK has a unique special mental illness that has targeted all politicians…
I have a theory that infrastructure is basically done. Mid 19th century to the 20th century, we got trains, cars, and we built railways and roads bigly. Projects like the Severn Crossing, Great Western Main Line or the M25 were no-brainers. Be able to go Bristol to London in a couple of days instead of a week. Get to Cardiff without driving all the way up to Gloucester.
We’re mostly doing political vanity projects now. At which point, Mr and Mrs Average aren’t all “get on with it”. So the only voices are the antis. Which means we pile up the costs to protect wildlife, put trains in tunnels to avoid noise, or to be eco to placate the antis. If there was pro- support, government would have just exempted the bats, and got on with it.
What, of any of the things being planned or built makes much difference? People who want to go Milton Keynes to Oxford are going to drive. After East West Rail is done, they’ll still drive, because there ain’t much near the station. The university, shopping and tourist sights. The science and medical work is on the edge of town, so you’ll have to then spend 30 minutes on a bus. If you really want to go to the university now, drive to Oxford Parkway and take a train in.
And solving the housing problem with Headington and that the hospital can’t get staff is easy: scrap the Oxford Green Belt. Let it grow east and let the house prices collapse.
The building’s done. Now it’s the maintenance: much less sexy and vote-winning. So it’s not done. Same problem in the USA, it seems.
Every government is shit around the world. If you want a country to run better, you get govt out of the way and use markets where possible.
It works in the private sector, because maintenance, operation is actually the money maker. Once you have established a theme park, they print money. You have to add some new attractions and keep it nice to keep people coming, but it’s a small fraction of the revenue. The parks are the huge earner for Disney, not the movies.
Maybe not 5 years to replace the cables – maybe 3 years to spot the problem first?
How those racist, sexist and bigoted colonial Victorians solved such problems in their day:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/aug/30/transport.world2
Bloody hell. Changed the gauge of the entire Great Western over a weekend?
Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof has a unique place in our memory. In 1985 I was posted to Cyprus and due to start early January 1986. For reasons too boring to go in to we decided to drive, even though it would be over Christmas and New Year.
Knowing what Christmas can be like on the Continent we planned our route through Germany and an travel agent found us a small hotel in Stuttgart that would be open for Christmas Eve and Christmas night and would do meals. Just before we left our booking got changed to a large hotel in the business district.
When we arrived at the huge hotel we were the only guest and the restaurant wasn’t open or going to be open for the full stay. As it was early afternoon we shot in to Stuttgart but the only place we could find for a meal was in the Hauptbahnhof and as they were in the process of closing and only had Hungarian Goulash. The restaurant area was full of what can only be described as down and outs. Nice meal though, probably because we were hungry.
On the way back to the hotel we found a garage still open and stocked up on booze, crisps, chocolate and biscuits and got pissed up playing a rudimentary computer game.
Fortunately Germany opens on Christmas Day and we found an Argentinian restaurant for lunch. Next to us was a very quite couple who just scowled at each other before breaking out in to a blazing row, which continued outside for some time.
Its amazing, I can’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday but that 42 YO memory is crystal clear and its something we both agree on.
Stuttgart Hbf is quite an elegant building for a 50s brutalist design. It is also protected and can’t be knocked down.
Its problem is that there is no room to expand and it has become a bottleneck in the new hi speed network, hence the plans since the 90s to move the ICE lines underground and the local service stay upstairs.
I first went to Stuttgart 41 years ago, InterRailing. Yup station full of beggars and tramps and the unemployed playing chess in the Schlosspark.
All around the city is lovely though. The tram journeys can be really spectacular. My company’s offices were in Degerloch.
In any city in Germany the same people are always hanging around the bahnhof.
I remember it as quite splendid, as are lots of railway stations.
My wife’s ailments mean we don’t go in to cities, which is a shame because Stuttgart is on my bucket list as it was the focal point of a German learner’s book I read a couple of years ago.
Have eaten in Stuttgart. Didn’t need to eat for a couple days*. Filling doesn’t describe it.
(*Calorifically a week but habit etc)
Early 80s Stuttgart rail-station. Just what I remember.
That said, I far preferred Germany when there were two of them. They seem to have taken the worst parts of both Germanys & combined them. Wonder what they did with what was left over?.
Fortunately Germany opens on Christmas Day and we found an Argentinian restaurant for lunch.
Presumably you went for the option of meat, served with meat and more meat.
Not that I’m complaining, but I’ve eaten in Brazillian and Argentine restaurants and they do like their meat.
Like this?
I remembered the *SPACE* in that but not the meat. They seem to source really good meat in Brazillian places. I forget what else I had with it. A bit of salad maybe? But the meat stands out.
I’ve had the pleasure of working in Buenos Aires, the meat there was far better than any I’ve had at Argentine restaurants in this country. Succulent meat and a good quality Melbec, life doesn’t get much better when you’re stuck in a foreign country for work.
If you like meat with meat plus meat as a side dish I recommend a Balkan Grill if you’re ever in North Germany (perhaps BIG will let us know if you can get them in South Germany now if he stops by) .
There was a Balkanese take away across the road from where I lived in Vienna.
It was great. I used to have cevapici and chips.
And the problem with that is?
I can still remember having gulaschsuppe in Munich airport some time in the noughties. I miss German food, but my last time, Hamburg 2023, I was hard put to find anywhere to have squaddy favourites from the 70s. It’s all pizza and thai now.
We took a “taster” cruise to Hamburg which included a few hours in the city. While most went off to do some culture sight seeing we treated ourselves to a curry wurst near the bus station where they dropped us off.
Nah. It’s been a Lachplatte for decades. [Does Cem speak German? Online translators say it means “laugh plate.”]
lachplatte is a rather odd thing to say.
lachnummer is more common.
He could be being oblique. A Lachplatte was a comedy record.
How long does it take our Appeals Court to correct error?