In cooperation with Deutsche Bahn, the main railway station in the centre of Hamburg is to be developed into an intermodal transport hub. With a daily passenger volume of 550,000 travellers, this station is already one of the most vibrant transport hubs in the European rail network.
The double-decker high-speed trains developed at the DLR Institute of Vehicle Concepts in Stuttgart and published under the project name NGT (Next Generation Train) are particularly suitable for meeting the requirements for increased rail transport capacity. For the Hbf. Hamburg main station, this means that in future it will be able to cope with a 1.5 to 2.0 times higher volume of traffic.
The implementation of this objective in an architectural design should follow the guiding principle: ‘More mobility with less traffic’. This means that passengers will be offered a convenient link between the various regional and supra-regional modes of transport directly at the main station. The extension of the station concourse serves to accommodate and guide up to one million travellers and visitors a day and creates convenient transfer options to the S-Bahn service, which is particularly busy in Hamburg with 270,000 passengers a day to date.
In line with the guiding principle, the design task is to find the simplest possible horizontal and vertical link between the different modes of transport and, in particular, to design a station concourse that better connects the main station with the adjacent central city centre area as a sustainable infrastructure.