Is Zurich’s new $30,000,000 bicycle tunnel worth it? | Riding through the tunnel

There’s more to Zurich’s new bicycle tunnel that just a hole in the ground. There’s quite a big story behind it that makes this very expensive solution kind of worth the hassle.

Let’s explore Zurich’s nuderground together.

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Zurich has just opened its new bicycle tunnel, and it’s a pretty impressive piece of infrastructure. On a hot day like today, it’s the perfect excuse to escape into the cool concrete depths of Zurich’s underground world. So, come along as I take you through the new tunnel, show you around, and explain why it was built, how the idea came to life, and what kind of impact it might have on the city. But first, a problem statement. What do you do when a hot, steamy, long, hard object blocks a boy in a bicycle? And what’s worse than that, what if there are a lot of them? I’m talking about trains in their tracks, you absolute sickos. That’s right, these long hot boys driven by one strong uh Okay, I’ll stop now. Um, trains in their tracks create fragmentation issues, particularly city centers. And in the case of Zurich City, the amazing train system of the extremely busy main station has done just this to bicycles. If you want to go from District 4 to District 5, you have to take some serious detours because unfortunately, much like rivers, gorgees, and highways, train tracks are extremely expensive to cross because bridges and tunnels are not cheap, especially in city centers. So, you’re stuck with using what you got. And in the case of Zurich, we have basically three options to go from Cry 4 to Cry 5 across the tracks. For those who’d rather not risk their life playing Indian Frogger to cross the tracks, you essentially have three options. Number one, going around Hedbanhoff through the very unsafe intersection. Number two, going to Negreish Bridge. Dismount your bicycle. Cycle across sprint up the stairs carrying your bike or take the elevator. Push it along the bridge because it’s pedestrian only. Then back down the stairs on the other side. Also, fun fact, it’s actually a great bridge to bring dates so they can watch you foaming over the trains coming and going and watching the sunset. And the third option, head west towards Langstrasa and then you can take the underpass there. But here you can also experience some of Zurich nightife’s most iconic and popular tourist attractions. These deviations are either unsafe, timeconuming, or a great night out. All of which not really suitable for children. And this is where the city came up with the Stud Tunnel or Fellow Tunnel. It is a safe uninterrupted grade separated tunnel to go under the main station connecting the north and south of the station. You probably can’t feel it, but I can. It’s significantly cooler down here thanks to the wonders of concrete and thermodynamics, whatever that is. The north side has two entrances that intersect underground. And the south entrance already had a ramp for the existing bicycle storage underneath Ouropa Ali, but it needed to be rebuilt for a gentler gradient. I have a video on cycling and hills if you’d like to know more about why this is important. In the middle, it has a bicycle storage that connects with the western underground passage of Zurich Alpano. Now, at a cost of around 28 million Franks, was this the only option that represents value for money just to save a few minutes when there’s already a new pedestrian bridge nearby and an existing, albeit dangerous, intersection that could be improved with some well-placed concrete and paint on either side of the station? Well, aside from provoking the SVP by investing in transport infrastructure that doesn’t prioritize cars, the tunnel was ultimately chosen as preferred option to address the biking network gap. That pedestrianon bridge was actually considered as an option, but it was ultimately dismissed for various reasons I’ll soon get into. Now, going back in history, because of the expansion of a main station, the federal railway company SBB had always envisioned an active transport link across the tracks and thus commissioned a study and competition to make a bridge across the tracks where the Negrelli bridge is today. In 2011, they commissioned an English architectural engineering firm to design a bike and pedestrian bridge. And this is what they came up with. A concrete behemoth that would have no supports in the track space and would need massive ramps up on both ends in order to reduce the gradient to reach the bridge 7 m above the track field. This was estimated to cost around 30 million Franks in 2011. The city recognized that the costly and probably impractical bridge wasn’t really politically feasible, so it was partially shelved for future consideration. However, in 2014, a bicycle advocacy group put together a petition that was submitted to repurpose an old highway stop originally built as part of the proposed Y highway plan during the late 1980s Esban development project at the main station, which is what our lovely bicycle tunnel is. Now, proposal for the tunnel was much cheaper at around 1 million Franks estimated in 2014 to convert the empty discus tunnel into a bicycle tunnel with only some minor outfitting necessary. Unfortunately, after some quick math, the city realized that 1 million Franks is less than 30 million Franks and opted to pursue the bicycle tunnel option and later in 2016 downgraded the 30 million Frank active transport bridge to a pedestrianon bridge, resulting in the non-archchitectural ego design we have now. The planned bicycle tunnel in Zurich makes use of an existing underground cabin approximately 200 meters long and around 25ish meters wide. Where exactly was this highway supposed to go, you might ask? Well, you’ll have to wait for the video that come out. When you look at Zurich main station and go through it, it’s a densely packed piece of transport infrastructure, and it’s hard to picture where exactly they can fit in a tunnel amongst this giant yet compact building. Well, Zurich’s main station is notoriously complicated to navigate, especially for first-time visitors. With its multiple underground levels, hidden platforms, and maze-like concourses, it can feel more like a level from Tomb Raider than a modern transport hub. Well, where exactly the tunnel fits into all of this? It’s a doozy. You see, Zurich’s main station is actually structured a bit like a sandwich. So, we have the original Zurich main station, which now serves as the Great Hall with its platform extension completed just after the turn of the 20th century across the river Zil. To deal with the everinccreasing car traffic in the area immediately adjacent to the main station where trams, cars, buses, and pedestrians shopping in the busy Barnhof Stras converge, there was a plan created to make an underground shopping area and pedestrian underpass into the main station to reduce the traffic holdups. Then in the 80s, they constructed the city’s first train tunnel to accommodate the new Esban system on the northern side of the station along with more underground passages and shopping, predominantly east, but also a passage on the western side of the Zilla River that inconveniently flowed under the main tracks. For this reason, the tunnel had to be even deeper in order to go just under the river. And finally, in the early 2010s, they completed the second cross city train line intended primarily for long-distance trains on the southern side of the station along with more shopping and passage space. So, you can see how the tracks and passages act like the bread and the river is the tasty filling of the sandwich. But in amongst all these delicious sounding infrastructure projects, where the bloody hell did they find space to put this tunnel? It’s not like a simple garden pipe underboard through to the other side. No, it’s a 200 m long and quite girthy tunnel. Well, you see, the federal government actually had plans to build a highway through the city that would have passed near the main station. So, during the development of the Esban tunnel system in the late 1980s, they actually incorporated an additional tunnel cavity into the earthworks because why not? You already got the machinery there. This space was reserved for a potential future road tunnel. Well, actually, it wasn’t potential, it was in the plans, and it was positioned between the Zeal River and the Western Underground Passage, wedged between the existing above ground tracks and the underground tracks. It’s actually kind of crazy seeing a city with just enough foresight to amalgamate infrastructure project construction and to build a highway tunnel before the actual highway plan had been completed, but with not enough foresight at the same time to say maybe this highway plan is stupid and we shouldn’t do it. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But what’s also funky is that there’s another one of these main station developments that had another piece of transport infrastructure incorporated into its build. But like the highway project and why it remained disused, that will have to wait for another time. Look, I’m trying to play hard to get, okay? I’m trying to get some audience retention. Okay, fast forward to around 2014. The city was quite open to this idea of using the disused highway stub as a bicycle tunnel. But unfortunately, the initial estimates of 1 million Franks and a few months of work unsurprisingly turned into many millions more and a few years of work. And suddenly the work would cost merely of 30 million Franks estimated as it had to include financing for construction costs if they want to reconvert the tunnel back into a highway. Why reconvert it? Well, yeah, that’s a topic for another time. Lots to go into, but at this point, the city of Zurich in 2021 put the final question to the people and asked if they will permit the city government to take out a line of credit to finish this project. It was an emphatic yes with over 70% of the people voting in favor of it. So work started in 2022. 2 and 1/2 years later, it’s complete and we can now ask the question, is this an effective project? Unfortunately, it’s not a road project in the USA, so it’s not immune to costbenefit analysis. Upon first glance, the time saving isn’t that great unless you’re coming and going directly to either side of the main station. There always was the option to just get off your bike and walk across the main station hall on ground level. It was quite simple and only took a few minutes. Having said that, it appears to just connect painted bicycle gutters on either side of the main station, but that’s ignoring the bigger picture. I wouldn’t say Zurich has the grandest plans to develop Sier Dutch level bicycle infrastructure, but it does have good plans. The veil of foren or priority bike lanes in English are what the city of Zurich is working towards. Bicycle roads that prioritize cyclists through the removal of cars, grade separated cycle lanes, reduction of vehicle speeds, priority signaling, modal filters, removal of parking, etc., etc. These are the things the city of Zurich is yet to build either side of the tunnel to bring the biking experience to the next level. Fortunately, they’re quite far away from that completed picture. The city is nowhere near there yet and painted bicycle gutters like these will remain for the next few years until all the current projects are complete and objections quashed. The missing connecting bike paths aside, the tunnel is still effective in massively improving safety for the more nervous riders like children and aged riders. The tunnel cabin also drastically increases bicycle parking for regular bikes. Ebike parking with charges, trailers, and um micromobility users with a very high preference for a specific scooter. Or maybe scooters are scarce here during the peak hour commuting times. The bicycle parking also includes lockers and a nice entrance way to the western underground passage where you can immediately go up a set of stairs to your platform. It’ll be interesting to see whether the paid secure bike parking section underneath Our Europa Ali will lose customers to the new unsecured but free bike parking in the tunnel. Now nearly 28 million Franks might seem like a steep prize, but it becomes more reasonable when you consider that the proposed bridge over the tracks was both prohibitively expensive and awkward due to its long access ramps. Also, neither Lrasa nor the eastern end of the station are part of the veil of Fortzugen network, likely because these areas are too congested to accommodate both bicycle and cars without significantly reducing or eliminating car traffic altogether. which is a perfect time to tease you with Zurich flirting with the idea of actually making the area around Hal Banhof a complete carfree area. That would be a divine development in Zurich’s vibe. And a bit more trees and less concrete would be great, especially on hot summer days like when I’m recording this video. So, there it is. An old tunnel built for something else was repurposed at a high cost for what initially looks like a poor time saving, but is actually an early key piece in Zurich’s bicycle network development that’s yet to come. It’s also a nice reprieve in summer because of the concrete cooled by the river and a nice place to store your bicycle. So hopefully in the future, we’ll see how this all develops. And if you like my content, make sure you subscribe and leave a comment about your city’s interesting bicycle infrastructure. I’m always looking at unique urbanism places to travel. Thanks to the people who helped me create this video and uh got another one coming out soon as well.