Planning

Not long after the Second World War, as traffic on the Brenner route began to increase, the first ideas of expanding and renewing the route between Munich and Verona began to emerge. In 1955, the federal Minister Dr. Guido Jakoncig proposed building a 12-kilometer long double-decker tunnel (with three railway tracks on the lower level and two highway lanes for each direction on the upper level) from Steinach to Gossensaß or Vipiteno (about 24 kilometers). Also in 1955, Ministry assistant undersecretary Dr. August Dressler suggested an “underground railway” between Munich and Verona. According to this scheme, a 65-kilometer long base tunnel would cross the Alpine arc from Innsbruck (Bergisel) to Scenna, near Merano.

In 1957, Dr. Ing. Antonio Graf Sardagna advocated the expansion of the Brenner railway and intensive utilization of the existing facilities. An improved study suggested a roughly 18.1-kilometer summit tunnel (running under the Brenner pass) between Stafflach and Vipiteno. The access routes were to show a maximum gradient of 16%. However, this project required a horseshoe tunnel north of Matrei (3.5 kilometers) and another one north of Aica (about 4.5 kilometers) In 1961 Sardagna realized that this project was unsatisfactory and suggested building a 40-kilometer tunnel between Innsbruck and Vipiteno with a gradient of about 9.6%.

In Spring of 1959, assistant undersecretary Ing. Robert Neuner proposed a low-gradient, straight-line Brenner railway. He used Sardagna’s plans for the Garmisch-Innsbruck part of the line. Like Dressler before him, he suggested a 53.1-kilometer base tunnel from Innsbruck to San Martino in Passiria. More or less under the Tribulaun mountain, a roughly 14-kilometer long tunnel would branch off to Vipiteno. The maximum gradient in the tunnel was to be 5.5%. Neuner changed his plans repeatedly between 1960 and 1974.

In 1967, the vice-general director of the Italian railway company FS, Dr. Ing. Ferruccio Marin, presented an improved project allowing for speeds up to 200 kph on the basis of Sardagna’s proposal. The gradient was set at 12%. A 38.8-kilometer tunnel was to run from Innsbruck to Prati near Vipiteno. Sixty-four point five kilometers of tunnels were planned between Vipiteno and Bolzano. This project was later re-worked by the Italian railway company and then presented to the UIC as FS-UIC-74-Project.

In 1971 the planning committee of the UIC decided to create a European infrastructure plan for important railway connections. One of these railway facilities was the Brenner corridor from Munich to Verona. The mountain stretches from Innsbruck to Bolzano and the stations of Brennero and Fortezza were bottleneck points. The “Brenner Axis” working group, consisting of experts of the three railway companies „Deutsche Bundesbahn“, „Österreichische Bundesbahn“ and „Ferrovie dello Stato“, was established to analyze the situation. The group suggested a low-gradient, straight-line New Brenner Railway with a base tunnel and did the conceptual planning. The following line elements were defined:

• Speed:  200 km/h
• Minimum radius:  R = 4000 m
• Maximum gradient:  10‰

The first two reports came out in 1973 and a supplement followed in 1975. Once the “Brenner Axis” group’s work was done, ÖBB commissioned a preliminary study for the Brenner railway stretch in the Inn valley between Kufstein and Innsbruck, which was presented in 1975.

It was feared, meanwhile, that these plans would involve quite remarkable impacts on the inhabited areas of the Land Tirol, so that in February of 1977, the regional government entrusted the engineering offices of „Ingenieurgemeinschaft Lässer-Feizlmayr, Innsbruck-München“ with a preliminary project for the stretch of the Brenner low-gradient railway that was to run through Tirol. With the cooperation of Prof. E.H. Weiss of the Dept. of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences at the University in Vienna, as pertained to geology and of Dipl.-Ing. W. Rutschmann, the project manager for the Gotthard base railway line, and involving the three railway operators DB, ÖBB, and FS, the analysis was expanded to include the entire corridor from Munich to Verona,  thereby allowing a more complete evaluation and design for this straight-line, low-gradient Brenner railway. The studies for the base route were based on the Neuner and „FS-UIC 74“ proposals, since the Brenner Axis Group had judged them the most satisfactory, from the point of view of the requirements of a modern, forward-looking railway line  Variations with an alpine crossing from Innsbruck to Aica, known as the “East Route” and one from Innsbruck to Merano known as the “West Route” were compared and the "East Route" was judged the most advantageous. This line, along with its access routes, was called the “Brenner straight-line, low-gradient railway project 1978” and was further elaborated.

The project was presented in two parts:

• the Innsbruck-Bolzano section with a 57.7-kilometer base tunnel and a summit 720 meters above sea level
• the section in the lower Inn valley with the evaluation of the 1975 preliminary study commissioned by the Austrian railway company, Österreichische Bundesbahnen, and the recommended changes based on that study

In 1983, six variations on tunnel projects running through the Karwendel- and the Wettersteingebirge were examined by request of the regional government of Tirol. These projects would all have required the construction of new access routes in Bavaria and along leisure and recreational areas [Rihosek, 1983]. For this reason it was agreed to build a new two-track rail facility, including as much as possible of the existing rail lines.

On May 31st, 1985, a European agreement was signed concerning the great rail axes in Europe, in which the „Oslo-Munich-Kufstein-Brenner-Verona- Bologna-Bari“ and the „Stockholm-Prague-Linz-Salzburg-Tarvis-Venice-Bologna“ corridors were defined (in Italy, this was recognized with Law No. 137/89).

In 1986, the Ministers for Transportation of Germany, Italy and Austria commissioned a technical feasibility study for the “Brenner Base Tunnel”. This feasibility study was carried out, on the basis of the already existing plans, by the planning and engineering offices of „Internationales Brenner-Konsortium IBK“ and was completed in 1989.
This feasibility study (1987-1989) examined eleven different variations for three different corridor routes.

• Corridor route west of the Wipp valley (Stubaier Alps).
• Corridor route along the Wipp valley
• Corridor route east of the Wipp valley (Zillertaler Alps).

The proposed route for the Brenner base tunnel that was finally chosen by the team, from among 59 possible routes, was the basis for an additional study commissioned in 1991 by the Ministers for Transportation for the northern and southern access routes, which was completed in 1993. The main results were the technical and environmental feasibility of the total project and the definition of the northern access route, based on three corridor routes with 60 variations.
• West corridor route – Wetterstein: Munich area - Garmisch/Mittenwald area – Innsbruck area
• Central corridor route – Karwendel: Munich - Karwendeltunnel area – area east of Innsbruck
• East corridor route – Inn valley: Munich area – Rosenheim area – Kufstein area – Innsbruck area

Four possible projects were chosen for these corridor routes:

• Project 1: Multi-track expansion or new construction along the existing line on the east corridor route (Inn valley)
• Project 2: New construction along the east corridor route (Inn valley). The routes are mostly separate from the existing railway line
• Project 3: Routes along the central corridor (Karwendel)
• Project 4: Routes along the west corridor (Wettersteingebirge)

The feasibility study (1987-1989) for the Brenner base tunnel allowed for mixed traffic operations with a total line capacity of 400 trains per day, including 80 passenger and 320 goods trains. The feasibility study (1987-1989) set the maximum speed along the line at 160 km/h for 1500 -ton goods trains (700 meters long), at 100 km/h for 1200-ton trains and at 250 km/h for passenger trains (400 meters long). The later in-depth feasibility study of 1993 set the maximum speed along the line for goods trains at 160 km/h for the entire Munich-Verona railway axis.

In 1996-1997, the „Brenner Consultants“ group of experts carried out a technical and commercial optimization of the new Munich-Verona railway project with the Brenner base tunnel. During these analyses and project suggestions it became clear that the planned access to the Freienfeld/Campo di Trens station made little sense and the so-called “Freienfelder Loop” was cancelled. Straighter routes and improvements in construction, engineering and rail equipment were also proposed.

The 55-kilometer Brenner Base Tunnel is the main element of the Munich-Verona corridor section. This is a part of the North-South railway infrastructure known as the TEN-V No. 1 axis,  which was approved by the European Parliament and the European Commission with Decision No. 884/2004/EG on April 29th, 2004 in the course of the negotiations about the new TEN-V guidelines.