European quarter

Structural verification for the new building of the tunnel “Europagarten”

Since 2008 the approx. 90 hectare area of Frankfurt’s former marshalling yard has been developed with media supply, streets, local public transport and regional rail transport.

The already constructed, 60 m wide corridor of the Europa boulevard to the east and the west of the Emser bridge will be extended through the Europagarten towards the west and connected to the street “Am Römerhof”. The Europagarten as a green area and central park with an overall size of approx. 60.000 m² will be tunnelled and the traffic of the Europa boulevard will be led below the park in a tunnel structure for a length of 395 m.

The standard cross-section of the tunnel is executed as a frame structure using the open building method. It has three pipes and an overall width of approx. 23,70 m and a height of approx. 7,10 m. The traffic lanes will be led in single-lane with a side stripe in the outer cells of the tunnel cross section (clear width 6,50 m each).

The city railway will be running in the middle pipe of the cross-section of the tunnel on two tracks (clear width approx. 7,90 m). The structure has operating rooms in the eastern and western entrance area as well as a western and eastern lifting structure.

ZPP was acting as a structural design verification engineer. Verification included the tunnel as well as operational buildings and the entrance / trough areas and retaining walls. This included specifically the two-phase-verification which included, besides verification of approval calculations and execution drawings, also verification of the draft planning.