Arriving, boarding, driving off – this is the experience that users of the subway in Hamburg will have in the future. A train should be able to start every 100 seconds, is the goal of the "U-Bahn 100" project. This is intended to improve comfort for passengers, but above all to increase capacities by around 50 percent compared to the current level. On the way to this goal, Hamburger Hochbahn has cleared an important hurdle and is now reporting the success of the test runs with the automated railway.
Susanne Preuß
Business correspondent in Hamburg.
- Follow I follow
However, it will still take some time before the people of Hamburg can actually take advantage of the progress: The system will not be installed on the two particularly busy lines U2026 and U2 until the end of 4. Here, east of Hamburg's main train station in the direction of the Elbe bridges, 90,000 people are already on the move every day.
The subway trains will then start moving, accelerating, braking and stopping completely independently. This is made possible by a digital technology called "moving blocks", which, unlike today, does not always maintain the same safety distance between the vehicles, but can also achieve short distances by interacting with the other trains, depending on the situation.
The radio-based train protection and control system, called Trainguard, comes from Siemens Mobility, while the digitalization of the trains is carried out by Alstom. The investments amount to 200 million euros. Hamburg has applied for subsidies under the Municipal Transport Financing Act, which regulates the promotion of innovative transport projects.
Other cities are also embracing automation
The technology is not new. Beijing, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires, as well as Paris and London, are examples where Trainguard has already proven its worth. The challenge, as the Hamburger Hochbahn points out, is the conversion of the existing building. The Hamburg-based company, which was founded 112 years ago – with the participation of Siemens, by the way – is one of the oldest public transport companies in Germany. For Beijing, for example, where the subway network has only grown in recent years, a different technology could be used from the outset. If Hamburg were to implement the planned U5 line, it would also be intended as an autonomous operation from the outset.
In one place, Germany is even much further along – exactly where the first steam locomotive once operated: in Nuremberg, trains have been running autonomously since 2008. The higher investments were quickly compensated by savings in personnel, it says.
In Hamburg, however, the focus should not be on costs, it is a matter of creating more capacity for the mobility turnaround, and Jens-Günter Lang, Chief Technology Officer of Hochbahn, explains the necessary comfort: "With a 5-minute interval, I as a passenger no longer need a timetable. A 100-second interval means that I don't have to run after the subway anymore."