The Vienna Stadtbahn () was a rail-based public transportation system operated under this name from 1898 until 1989. Today, the Vienna U-Bahn lines U4 and U6 and the Vienna S-Bahn (commuter rail) run on its former lines.
In 1894, the architect Otto Wagner was hired as the artistic director for the Vienna Stadtbahn project. The Stadtbahn is one of Vienna's better-known examples of early Art Nouveau architecture. Its most famous buildings are the two former station entrances on Karlsplatz, now used as a café and a museum respectively, and the Hofpavillon, a station built specifically for Emperor Franz Joseph, located at the eastern end of Hietzing station. Other preserved historical stations are the elevated stations along the Gürtel and in some of the suburbs.
The use of the term Stadtbahn in the line's name derives from the 19th century usage of the term to simply mean a railway in an urban area, in a similar way to the naming of the roughly contemporaneous Berlin Stadtbahn. It is not related to the usage of the term stadtbahn in post-World War II Germany to mean light rail lines upgraded from street tramways. The use of tram type vehicles on much of the Vienna Stadtbahn after 1925 is entirely coincidental, and happened long after the line got its name.
History
Early plans In Vienna, there were very early relevant projects for railway lines in the city. The oldest dates back to 1844, when the engineer Heinrich Sichrowsky designed an atmospheric railway based on system of George Medhurst and Samuel Clegg and emulating such lines in London and Paris. This new line was to lead from the Lobkowitzplatz below the Vienna Glacis to the Vienna River and to Hütteldorf. Finally, in 1849, Julius Pollack suggested that the Vienna Rail Link, which was still in the planning stage at the time, also be operated atmospherically.
The next plans followed in connection with the first city expansion in 1850, including one in 1852 preferred by the Vienna Construction Company and the Vienna Bank Corporation project. The second proposal, which had already been worked out in detail, was presented by Count Henckel von Donnersmarck in 1867. In 1869, Baurat Baron Carl von Schwarz finally brought in a third proposal. This was the first proposal to use the term Stadtbahn.
A need arises By the latter half of the 19th century, there were seven main line railway lines radiating from Vienna. These were the Nordbahn opened in 1837, the Südbahn opened in 1841, the Ostbahn opened in the same year, the Westbahn opened in 1858, the Franz-Josefs-Bahn opened in 1870, the Nordwestbahn opened in 1872 and the opened in 1881. Each of the seven routes belonged to a different railway company and each had its own train station in the capital, which were, partly for reasons of space, taxation and the military, built far from the city centre. Moreover, six of them were designed as terminal stations, and only the last-opened station, the , was built as through station from the beginning. While the comparatively few passengers who did not have the capital as a starting point or destination were able to switch between the stations via the Vienna tramway, which was set up in 1865, this was much more difficult for transit freight traffic.
In addition, it became apparent in the late 19th century that the main stations themselves - including the Westbahnhof and Franz-Josefs-Bahnhof - urgently needed to be relieved. In the long run, they no longer met the complicated demands of parallel long-distance and local traffic and would have to be rebuilt without the construction of a metropolitan railway.
While the rival railway companies at that time had no interest in a central urban solution - the present-day Vienna Hauptbahnhof finally went into operation in 2012 - the Austrian military, after the March Revolution of 1848, demanded measures to prevent a recurrence of such events. Although the commissioning of the from 1859, the from 1872 and the Donauuferbahn from 1875 provided some relief, the heavy losses of the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866 showed that further connections between the long-distance railways were needed. After 1867, only 18 kilometers of the Austrian railway network - including the Verbindungsbahn - were in state hands, so in 1874 a renewed nationalization wave began. The de-privatization of operations combined with the new connections in the capital would make it possible, in case of mobilization - especially in case of a two-front war - to move troops, weapons and ammunition more easily. But also the so-called Approvisionierungsverkehr - that is, the supply of the city and the soldiers with food - played a major role in the future of the Vienna Stadtbahn. Equally important was the possibility to connect the large inner-city barracks to the main lines in the event of war, including, in particular between 1849 and 1856, the Arsenal, built as a consequence of the March Revolution.
Another important aspect of the construction of the Stadtbahn was the demolition of the Linienwalls, a fortification around the Vienna suburbs. It had become militarily obsolete in the middle of the 19th century, which initially led from 1873 to the building of the 75- to 80-meter wide Gürtelstraße, with the inner belt within the wall and the outer belt running outside the wall. The demolition of the fortifications from 1894 then made room for new urban railway lines. An early alternative term for the Stadtbahn was therefore 'Belt train' or 'Short Belt railway'.
At an early stage, it also became apparent that, for synergy reasons, it would make sense to link the Stadtbahn construction with two other major urban projects in the second half of the 19th century. One of these was the Vienna River canalisation, partly underground, and the other was the further extension of the Danube Canal. Both measures were mainly designed for flood protection, with the Danube Canal in the Freudenau also creating a trading and winter harbor, which was also flood-proof. In addition, the Danube Canal also received two collection channels, the left main collecting channel and the right main collecting channel, built in parallel with the Stadtbahn construction in the course of improving canalization in Vienna. The area gained by the straightening of the two rivers could thus be used for the urban railway lines, avoiding the expensive purchase of private land and the demolition of existing buildings.
1873: The World's Fair As a result of the 1873 Vienna World's Fair and the economic boom from 1871, the idea of a city railway was again on the agenda. As a result of a competition organized by the Ministry of Commerce, 23 new plans were received by 1 March 1873 . Among them was, for the first time, a proposal for a pure tunnel railway, submitted by Emil Winkler. His planning was also based on the first systematic traffic census in Vienna. Even then, the ministry expressed the principle that level crossings with existing roads should not be allowed.
As a result of the economic collapse in Vienna in May 1873, interest in the so-called Stadtbahn question dropped again somewhat. Thus, none of the 23 drafts received a concession, although the municipality judged that of the consortium of Count Edmund Zichy, both in terms of the proposed local rail network and the proposed Vienna River canalisation as the most appropriate to the public interest. The project of Zichy and his fellow campaigners Baron Rothschild, Baron von Schey, Baron Carl von Schwarz, Achilles Melingo, Otto Wagner and Georg Scheyer provided an exclusively elevated train network with a central station between the and Augartenbrücke. From there, the line would lead in one direction to Baumgarten on the Westbahn, and in the other, along the Danube Canal to Franz-Josefs-Bahnhof and along the existing walls to the Rennweg. Further routes were planned to the Reichsbrücke, Hernals, Südbahnhof, Brigittenau or Floridsdorf.
Influence of Berlin After almost ten years without progress, the German capital Berlin finally gave the immediate impetus for a renewed discussion of the Viennese city rail question. As early as 7 February 1882, the Berliner Stadtbahn service began operations, which later served as a model for the Viennese Stadtbahn in several respects. Not only did it use continuous viaducts to carry the railway above the city's streets, but it was also operated by the state railway with steam locomotives and short train sets, and it joined several previously existing terminal stations with each other. In this context, three new proposals were submitted to the Austrian Government, the first even in the year before the opening of the Berlin plant.
The first proposal was submitted in August 1881 by a consortium of British engineers including James Clark Bunten and Joseph Fogerty, which reached the stage of obtaining a concession on 25 January 1883. It included a central station on the Danube Canal as well as a two-track belt railway with branches to all Viennese stations and to Hietzing. The route of the approximately long ring was planned along the Danube Canal and Wien River as an elevated railway on iron viaducts, and on the Gurtel partly as a viaduct and partly as an open or covered trench. The branch lines would all be built as elevated railways, mostly on viaducts. However the concession was extinguished by the Austrian government on 14 March 1886 because financial proof of the estimated cost of 719 million Austrian crowns could not be provided.
In competition with the Bunten and Fogerty proposal was a project submitted in 1883 by the for the construction of a line that consisted of the following three main lines: a double-track belt line from the Südbahnhof to the connection to the Nordbahn and the Nordwestbahn, for the most part intended as an elevated railway a central four-track underground line, crossing the diameter of the inner city in a north-south direction a line to be built as an elevated railway from the Westbahnhof to the former Schickaneder Bridge at today's
In addition, Siemens & Halske submitted the project of a network of electric railways for Vienna in 1884. However, the latter was narrow gauge and was therefore not accepted because the competent authorities feared that this could prevent the emergence of other lines.
Planning For the first time, the Stadtbahn project was made concrete in 1890, when Krauss & Co. submitted drafts as a basis for the official negotiations, although they have undergone numerous changes during the following years. The reason for the renewed approach to Stadtbahn construction was on the one hand the continuing economic upturn in Austria, and on the other hand a major expansion of the city of Vienna, adding districts 11 to 19 to the existing districts 1 to 10. As a result, the city increased from 55 to 179 square kilometers and the population increased from 800,000 to 1,300,000, causing the Stadtbahn project to gain in urgency. At the same time, the western expansion of the city required the expansion of the Stadtbahn project to take into account the newly incorporated municipalities from the beginning. So the planners added the so-called suburb line to the project, even though the namesake suburbs now also all belonged directly to the city.
Finally, in the later , held from 5 October to 16 November 1891 an enquete. It turned out that the decision to build would only be made jointly by the state, the state and the municipality. The Ministry therefore proposed the creation of a joint commission.