After many years of delays, Cologne's
north-south Stadtbahn route finally opened all its underground
stations on 13 Dec 2015, a good reason to visit the city once again
to catch up with these significant developments. The opening,
however, was still just a partial one, as a gap still exists along
this route between Heumarkt and Severinstraße, where the tunnel
collapsed in 2009 causing the Stadtarchiv located above to collapse
too and with two people dead in a nearby building which also crashed
down into a big hole. The accident was supposedly caused by faulty
construction of some diaphragm wall in what would have become a
chamber housing a cross-over along a pair of single-track tube
tunnels. After rescuing what could be rescued from the city's
archives (after all, Cologne dates back to the Roman period...),
investigation on the cause of the accident is still going on. With
apparently no deal possible between the city and the constructor, a
complicated procedure is necessary to actually access the point of
the defective wall deep below ground, soil had to be frozen, and it
will take some years to conclude still. After that, the metro tunnel
can be finished, but even the most optimistic sources quote a 2023
completion of the full route. And this takes us directly to the major
problem on the route brought into service recently.
The lack of a
cross-over in two separate tube tunnels means that trains entering
the tunnel from the southern portal have no option to change tracks
all the way to Severinstraße, so they have to return on the same
track, resulting in quite a chaotic operation from the passenger's
point of view, because a train in either direction will arrive on
either of the two tracks. And except for Bonner Wall, this kind of
information was not yet properly displayed yesterday, so here KVB,
the operator, urgently needs to make some rapid improvements.
On
weekdays, the trains of the newly introduced line 17 run every 10
minutes (the minimum headway possible with this kind of operation),
and every 15 minutes on Sundays. Yesterday, riding this line was free
and lots of locals tried it, resulting in quite full trains at all
times, and naturally messing up the timetable. I would have expected
that KVB would run an "as often as possible" service with
more trains to satisfy the people's curiosity. Instead of some
unfriendly staff forced to work on a Sunday at the information desks,
they should have brought in more drivers to cover a more intensive
service.
Now let's take a look at the route and
stations. I had already seen the rebuilt Breslauer Platz/Hbf station
previously, which forms part of the north-south project. Three years
ago, I also got a chance to see the first station on the new route
proper, Rathaus, which was opened as a single-track stub for line 5.
This station is a real tube station, with rather narrow platforms and
accesses.
A year later, i.e. two years ago, this stub was extended to
Heumarkt, but at that time I didn't manage to visit Cologne, so this
station was also new to me on my recent visit. I had seen many
photos, as it is labelled as one of the cathedrals of modern metro
station architecture, so my curiosity was naturally very strong. And
it didn't disappoint me. But the funny thing here is that the
"cathedral" part of the station is actually a fancy
provision for an east-west line which may never happen, so for the
moment it is just a mezzanine for the north-south line crossing one
level deeper, with the two levels forming an X-shaped structure.
Although there has been some talk again recently, the east-west route
(lines 1, 7 and 9) will remain on the surface for a while still,
resulting in quite a walk from the line 5 deep-level platform to the
surface platforms. Yesterday evening, these were bursting with people
coming from the shopping streets and the adjacent Christmas market,
so hopefully the long-planned east-west tunnel will soon get its
go-ahead to improve transfers and speed up journeys across the city
centre. So while the upper unused platform level features this huge
vault, the lower level for line 5 is quite straight-forward, but wide
and open enough to provide a good atmosphere. At the western end,
besides a lift, there is also a staircase, I think it is some 7 or 8
floors to get to the surface, a good way to skip the daily gym.
Otherwise there are lots of escalators up and down.
A walk from Heumarkt to Severinstraße
allows a look into the big hole caused by the tunnel collapse. What
will be the northern terminus of line 17 for the time being is quite
a deep station, too, determined not only by the tube-tunnelling, but
also by the fact that it runs below the crossing lines 3 and 4 which,
though on the surface, run in a cutting on their approach to
Severinsbrücke. At the northern end, 45 m long escalators lead
directly from the surface to the platform level, but with the upward
escalator failing again and again during the first day, I once walked
the stairs, and have to admit that they got me almost out of breath!
Alternatively, of course, there are also lifts. Coming from lines
3/4, passengers have to take stairs to reach a mezzanine and then
escalators down to platform level. The platform itself is
surprisingly wide for being a tube-type station, but here some two
thirds of entire station length of the space between the tubes was
excavated, with the roof supported by a series of inclined columns,
giving a very pleasant and generously laid-out waiting area. The
tubes are only perceivable at one end of the platform.
At Kartäuserhof, this is quite
different. This is a classical tube station, with cross tunnels only
at either end where the escalators and stairs arrive, plus a cross
passage in the middle where the direct lift to the surface is
located. Design-wise, this station features something I had never
seen before: the concrete linings behind the tracks were left bare,
which is not unusual, but on the platform side these are also
visible, but behind a blue transparent glass wall, a simple idea that
results in this special colour touch I have often missed in other
bare-concrete architecture. With the line running through a very
densely built-up district, the tubes actually lie below the
buildings, with not much space on the surface for wide exits, so one
side only has a staircase, and the other a pair of escalators and a
staircase, all leading to a small mezzanine, from where two sets of
escalators and stairs go down to either end of the platforms.
Chlodwigplatz was also designed as a
transfer station, although the lines crossing on the surface are more
of the tram type. The new platform is again quite wide with flights
of escalators either going to a main mezzanine dominated by a number
of indirectly illuminated columns, or to a smaller mezzanine and an
exit near the old city gate. The most striking element in this
station are the two huge painted murals on one side of the escalator
shaft, almost like a huge graffiti, but reaching heights where
unofficial sprayers may never get to:
The last station down the line is
Bonner Wall, which was mostly built by cut-and-cover, although the
northern end deliberately shows the end of the tube tunnels.
Unfortunately, and for no real obvious reason except possibly the
junction following immediately to the south, this station has side
platforms, making passenger orientation even more complicated,
especially if, like at one time yesterday, one platform doesn't
properly show the trains it will serve. An island platform would have
allowed a change of sides even in the moment the train actually
enters the station. But when the station was designed, noone could
foresee that such a complicated operation may be necessary over a
long period. Certainly, side platforms allow direct lifts from the
platforms to the pavements, whereas a lift from an island platform
would be located in the middle of the street above. Again, KVB has a
job to do here, as yesterday it was not clear for someone using a
lift from the surface which platform they will need to board the next
train. I fear that this matter will fill some comments in the local
press in the coming weeks. As a cut-and-cover station, it actually
gave me the impression of being only partly underground and the
ceiling slightly above street level. This illusion is caused by a row
of lights just below the ceiling which appear to be windows and
daylight coming in. Though separated by glass walls, almost the
entire station box can be overlooked from the mezzanines at either
end. Otherwise, the concrete/glass design is only disrupted by large
red areas where all the information panels are displayed.
Just beyond Bonner Wall, the line
splits, with the straight route via a ramp to Marktstraße fully
completed but not used yet. Probably the lack of a reversing option
at Severinstraße would not allow to introduce a service to this
3-track surface terminus right now. A further extension to
Arnoldshöhe has been approved and should be finished at least when
the full north-south tunnel is finally open.
Line 17, however, turns east and after
some 300 m surfaces to cross a main road at grade before joining the
existing route to Bonn which has long been running along the River
Rhine. There had been long discussions about how this level crossing
would influence operation, and most importantly, road traffic. In the
end, some provisions for a road tunnel below the Stadtbahn tracks
were made, but this will certainly not be built in the near future.
The line 17 shuttle now terminates a few stations further south in
Rodenkirchen, with some peak-hour trains continuing to Sürth.
So, all in all, had it not been for the
horrible tunnel disaster, I consider the north-south line a
well-achieved project, which unfortunately will only show its full
strength in some 10 years.
For more photos of each station visit our special gallery!
A few other notes on the Köln light
rail system. As may be known by the reader, the network is divided
into a low-floor and a high-floor system. While the low-floor lines
provide proper level access at all stops, some of the stations
belonging to the high-floor system have not yet been rebuilt with
high platforms, something I cannot really comprehend. There are not
too many left, I think, so really more effort should be made in this
respect. The fact that people have to climb into those cars via steps
clearly slows down alighting and boarding, and with a new series of
light-rail cars recently ordered, at least, like in Hannover, certain
lines should be operated exclusively with trains without those silly
steps. It is generally understood that light-rail trains without
steps are cheaper, need less maintenance and being high-floor allow a
much freer distribution of doors and thus also of seats and other
elements (something we learned from the U3-type cars in Frankfurt
back in the 1980s, and this is 2015!).
Regarding tickets, Cologne is in the
upper price range among German cities. With a day ticket mostly
costing between 6 and 7 euros, in Cologne it's 8.30€! Compared to
neighbouring VRR, the VRS fare system is slightly easier to
understand (well, almost any other fare system would beat VRR's in
this respect...), the "fare stages" are usually graphically
displayed at all stops, for the city of Cologne you need a 1b ticket,
2b if you want to include the smaller neighbouring towns served by
some light-rail trains too. To cover the entire Köln/Bonn system,
though, a 4-zone ticket is required. As I was actually staying in
Düsseldorf (VRR!) I was looking at joint tickets covering Düsseldorf
and Cologne for a day pass, but all information is very weird and
confusing, so to avoid problems I bought a normal train ticket and
then a day pass for Cologne. Probably tickets covering all of NRW
(the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia) may be an easier option for
some visitors. In any case I would recommend to get such tickets from
a staffed ticket office to be sure you get what you need. German
ticket inspectors have no mercy and often may not understand all
different tickets available in what we call "fare jungle".
I would urge the NRW government to properly merge all these areas
into one single fare system with one philosophy on how these zonal
systems work, but typically German, each area has its own way of
doing things, and the more complicated the better to keep occasional
riders from using public transport for being too complex and always
with a remaining fear that you have got the wrong ticket.
LINKS
UrbanRail.Net > Köln > Special North-South Line Gallery
