The 182-km Karlsruhe-Basel high-speed rail link is the centerpiece of Europe’s key rail freight corridor between Rotterdam and Genoa. The Rheintalbahn line – an existing section of the line between Karlsruhe and Basel to be upgraded – is over 150 years old. Accommodating up to 300 trains a day, its capacity limits are exhausted so that upgrading this section to satisfy the rail traffic requirements of today and tomorrow is mission-critical. The 45-km segment south of Freiburg between Teningen and Buggingen is to be upgraded and expanded so that end-to-end sustained speeds of 200 km/hr. are enabled in local rail service. Apart from 14 stations and 112 road and railway overpasses, this segment also includes a variety of retaining walls, noise barriers, culverts and other junction structures that have to be modified or constructed anew. 

Deutsche Bahn’s project approval section 8.7, for which ZPP is performing the planning and design work, provides for an alternative line including a tunnel solution. All planning and design work of this segment will be done exclusively applying BIM methodology. For the BIM and tunnel experts at SOCOTEC, this marks yet another milestone in the deployment of BIM in large-scale projects in Germany.