A super station under water

"From June 3, 15,000 Hamburgers will have one hour more free time per week," announced Die Welt in May 1973. Hamburg was expecting the most important event for local transport in 40 years:the inauguration of the new U2 line, with a route in the middle through the city center and under the Binnenalster. It should save the detour via the route of the U3 at the edge of the harbor - and thus six minutes each way between Schlump and Berliner Tor, one hour a week for commuters.

At the same time, the Jungfernstieg underground station, which had been a stop on the U1 since 1934, was expanded into a "super station under water" at great expense. The new four-storey transport hub was to become the second most important hub in the Hanseatic city. It was already designed to accommodate two years later the "City-S-Bahn" still under construction and a U4 (to Lurup/Osdorfer Born) planned for the near future.

The growing city needs new rapid transit

The booming Hanseatic city had outgrown its network of express trains and trams during the period of the economic miracle. More and more citizens were building a little house on the outskirts, and the so-called "large housing estates" that were just sprouting up - the modern residential towers of Osdorfer Born, Steilshoop and Mümmelmannsberg - wanted to be connected to the center. Since the individual and delivery traffic had increased significantly, the old tram was increasingly perceived as a traffic obstacle, and accidents became more frequent. As of October 1960, one of the 19 road lines was shut down almost every year.

HVV wants "linear" traffic

When the Hamburger Verkehrsverbund (HVV) was founded as a tariff and planning association in 1965, plans for a new hub in the city center gained momentum. The S-Bahn already had drawings for a route via Jungfernstieg and Landungsbrücken in the drawer to relieve the bottleneck via Dammtor:On the old connecting railway, the high frequency of trains on the two lines caused significant problems with the slightest delay. In the transport association, the plans of the elevated railway and S-Bahn for new inner-city routes quickly matured into a mega-project. The aim was finally to achieve "line-only" traffic, as Horst Lingner, Head of Schnellbahn at HVV, explained at the time:"This ensures that disruptions can no longer be transferred from one line to another."

Difficult work in the Alster silt

Construction of the "City-S-Bahn" began on October 17, 1967 with a symbolic ramming. Like a giant water snake, the construction site lined with sheet piling made its way from the main station through the middle of the Inner Alster and divided the water until the tunnel was clad from above. Meanwhile, the elevated railway dug its way from the Schlump in the direction of Gänsemarkt and tunneled under a section of the Alster using the shield tunneling method. Not only water and roads had to be undermined for the new lines, but whole blocks of houses. For years, Hamburg's underworld was a major construction site.

The work at the Jungfernstieg transfer station was to be particularly demanding from a technical point of view. The excavation pit was the size of two football pitches and alone employed 150 to 250 workers. Here it was necessary to fit the future City S-Bahn between the old (U1) and the new (U2) elevated railway line in the Alster silt - that was centimetre, even millimeter work. Engineers exchanged the floor of the U1 for new construction elements that also formed the roof of the S-Bahn tunnel.

Modern stop in trendy colors

While the shield tunneling machines for the S-Bahn were still eating their way under the business buildings to the Landungsbrücken, 20 meters under the Alster, the U2 tunnel was already getting its finishing touches. The hall "with two platforms and a total of four tracks" - two of them for the U4 - "with its bright pop colors will be Hamburg's most attractive underground station," wrote the "Hamburger Abendblatt" almost two weeks before the grand opening ceremony. A total of 35 escalators would save HVV users "exhausting footwork".

A folk festival to mark the opening

On Saturday, June 2, 1973, the milestone was set. "In the middle of Hamburg the world seems to be upside down - trains below, ships above. Bold engineers made it possible," applauded the "Abendblatt" in its lead. Mayor Peter Schulz handed over the freshly tiled platform hall on Jungfernstieg and the U2 line to traffic to the hearty sounds of the music corps of the Hamburg police, the Neugraben youth marching band and the VI Army Music Corps. From 12 p.m. to 8 p.m., everyone in Hamburg was able to try out the route between Gänsemarkt and Hauptbahnhof free of charge. On Sunday morning at 5.09 a.m. the first scheduled train on the U2 line pulled into the Jungfernstieg stop.

The Jungfernstieg U/S-Bahn station continues to grow

Two years later, on May 30, 1975, actress Helga Feddersen opened the S-Bahn section between Hauptbahnhof and Landungsbrücken with the words "Never get on the wrong track"; the missing piece to Altona was finished in April 1979.

However, the track troughs for the U4 line that had already been prepared at Jungfernstieg remained empty:after the Senate crisis of 1974, the new mayor, Hans-Ulrich Klose, embarked on a drastic austerity course and put the subway projects on hold. Only since HHA and Senate signed their contract for the development of Hafencity in June 2007 has it been certain:for the first time in 38 years, a new subway line will roll through Jungfernstieg. The future U4 Billstedt-Lohsepark is scheduled to go into operation in 2011.