Keystone
The city of Zurich’s Velotunnel comes before the people: The local council said yes on Wednesday to the loan of 27.65 million francs. If the urn is yes, it is expected that bicycles will be able to travel underground between Sihlquai and Kasernenstrasse from 2024.
The Velotunnel would close the “most important gap” in the city of Zurich’s cycle path network, and it was also called the “heart”. The benefits of the project were undisputed in the local council.
However, the SVP surprisingly switched from the yes to the no camp – as the only party. The planned free bicycle parking space was said to have overshot the target. That cannibalizes the Velostation Süd, which is managed.
There was also criticism because of the security. “It’s going to crack,” predicted Hans Jörg Käppeli (SP). He calculated that at peak times 2000 cyclists per hour would use the tunnel. There would be no concepts for safely managing these traffic flows. “We ordered a bike tunnel and received a works management project with a bit of bike.”
Civil engineering chief Richard Wolff (AL) countered that it was no wonder that there were still individual problems. The tunnel was never planned as a cycle route. But now there is finally a sensible solution for the relic of road construction. “It’s a happy day.”
Construction is scheduled to start in 2022.
Tunnel long been drilled
Originally, the city wanted to open the new connection between district 4 and 5 in 2014. The coordination with the canton and the federal government was so complex that nothing came of it.
The 192 meter long and 25 meter wide section of the tunnel was built at the end of the 1980s as a preliminary investment in the auto city tunnel. However, the corresponding motorway will not be realized in the next twenty years. As a precautionary measure, the loan of 27.65 million includes around 8.8 million with which the Velotunnel could be dismantled.
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