Stuttgart 21: Breakthrough of the Last Tunnel to the Main Station
At the beginning of May 2020, German Railways (DB) reached another milestone in the Stuttgart 21 project: With the breakthrough of the eastern tube of the 9.5 km long Filder Tunnel, the last of four tunnels has arrived at the future Stuttgart main station. The connection between the Filder plain in the south of Stuttgart and the Stuttgart basin is now complete.
The tunnel makes the connection between the future main station and the airport particularly fast: today, the connection takes just under half an hour; in the future, the journey time will be only eight minutes.
Roland Pofalla, Member of the DB Board of Management responsible for Infrastructure, “This is a milestone on the way to the new Stuttgart rail junction. My thanks go to all those involved who managed this tunnel breakthrough on schedule despite the difficult conditions of the Corona crisis.”
“Of course, it is unusual not to be able to celebrate the success of a tunnel breakthrough together with all those involved on site. The highest respect goes to to our miners and engineers who, with extraordinary prudence, have brought the tunnelling work to a successful conclusion in recent weeks,” said Andreas Rath, Managing Director of the JV ATCOST 21.
In the Stuttgart 21 project, a total of 50 of 59 km of tunnels, or 85%, have now been driven.
