Germany's 27-Year Struggle to Complete a Rail Project

Narration - Fred Mills
Executive Producer - Fred Mills
Producer - Adam Savage
Story - Adam Savage and Fred Mills
Research - Adam Savage
Video Editing and Graphics - James Durkin

Additional footage and images courtesy of DB Projekt Stuttgart-Ulm GmbH, Aldinger & Wolf, Arnim Kilgus, Berlin Brandenburg Airport, Dimitrios Katsamakas/CC BY-SA 3.0, Google Earth, Itelchan/CC BY-SA 3.0, Malte Hombergs and Plan B.

#construction #architecture #infrastructure

Ripping and/or editing this video is illegal and will result in legal action.

© 2021 The B1M Limited

[nicklas.bastian]

I come from Stuttgart and am younger than Stuttgart 21. I know that there are often a lot of problems, especially with projects of this size. But I think precisely these projects are crucial for the economic future of the region. You just have to look at countries like the US, where outdated, crumbling infrastructure is causing the economic decline of entire regions. Stuttgart 21 is now much more expensive than intended, but the costs of not expanding and living with old infrastructure that is not up to the challenges of future are much higher.

[TheBM]

If you're currently planning a major infrastructure project: please look at other examples around the world and then multiply your budget and timeline by 3.

[viktornicht]

Me, a Stuttgarter:
*softly* "please don't"

[leokimvideo]

Same happened in Australia, rail projects that took 40 years to complete. 50 years if you add the initial concept. Hey 27 years is nothing.

[esprit]

I read a joke about Stuttgart 21 that by now it would be more cost effective to just raise the entire city by 5 meters to fit in the station.

I read that joke 8 years ago...

[florian]

Me as a German reading the title: Oh no this is gonna be embarassing

[fengwang]

Appreciate how accurate the narrator pronounces the word "Stuttgart".

[mr.froschi]

I love how most people here that make fun of the projects are germans themselves and the rest is like yeah, yeah that happens.

[florianettwein]

I remember people protesting against this when i was in elementary school, im graduating next year.

[paulwaelder]

At a certain moment in time everyone will realise waht the "21" truly stands for: 21 billion of Euro.

[joshuajoe]

So German engineering is amazing until it is needed for a German project.

[timschulz]

Elbphilharmonie, Stuttgart 21, BER, ...
We just can't manage huge projects. Mostly because politicians want too much influence and they want it cheap. BER Airport could have been built for 5 billion € by Hochtief (the number might be off) but they thought that they could build it cheaper with hundreds ob subcontractors. And the politicians are still not in jail (and they never will be).

[swiper]

I was in Stuttgart about 2 years ago and was astonished by the scale of this project which is a massive piece of urban redevelopment in the heart of the city. While the revamp will undoubtedly be worth it in the end the scale of disruption it entailed is massive

[busyness]

just btw: this project is indeed much more complicated than Berlins Airport.

[carljo]

The cost is now around 10 Billion Euros. Me and my parents protested against the project back in the 2010s. Theyve just realized about 3 years ago, that the station will likely be overcrowdet and therefor they wanted to build another underground terminus station next to the new station. Luckily this has been cancelled a few days ago.

[mehp]

Given that Stuttgart sits right at the intersection of the Blue Banana, the economic area going from the Netherlands to northern Italy, and the aforementioned Paris-Bratislava/Budapest high speed rail line, I’d say this is a worthwhile investment for Stuttgart and for all of Europe.

[paulshi]

I've been to Stuttgart 2 years ago. I had a really fun time, but my impressions of the city was just two words: "under construction." This video perfectly explains why, and almost all the sites featured in the video look familiar to me haha

[TomJohnson]

Germany had only been united for 4 years when this project was started!

[zare]

Amateurs! Come to Belgrade. We are professionals. We have a rail station that’s under construction since 1977 and it’s still not finished.

[qaz]

Next up: China's one year struggle to complete 27 rail projects.