The province, construction company Strukton, ProRail and NS raised their glasses on Wednesday at the future Main Station in Groningen. It will open in 2025.
Deputy Johan Hamster (mobility, Christian Union, among others) was one of the people who raised a glass of non-alcoholic champagne at the progress of the construction of the new Main Station. He did this right under the first and, for the time being, only two new tracks.
He can already imagine what that place will look like in two years’ time. Hamster: “A travelers square where hundreds of people move back and forth, meet each other and move on. It’s great that we are entering the next phase and it is important to celebrate that together.”
The pedestrian tunnel connects the station with the Rivierenbuurt and will soon give travelers access to all train and bus platforms.
Bicycle storage
Strukton still has its hands full with the largely underground station for the time being. Its enormous dimensions can be seen in full for the first time, especially by the builders working there, now that the wall between the two large construction pits has been broken through.
Travelers will only go into the depths after the major conversion of the tracks in May and June 2025 (no train for 50 days). For the time being, they can only look down from above into the construction pit, which until recently still contained water.
The bottom floor, at a depth of approximately 9 meters, turns into an enormous bicycle shed, with within/above the passenger tunnel where you will soon walk to the platforms. The underground station also has a north-south bicycle tunnel.
It is still unclear how the tunnel under the old station building should be connected to the roundabout in the so-called Stadsbalkon (the existing bicycle shed at the front of the building). In 2021 it was discovered that the foundation of the monumental station building is different from the drawing and a solution has been under consideration for two years.
Station building
At the bottom of the still somewhat wet construction pit – Strukton is experiencing some leakage but can continue working – a work floor is first constructed. It will then, just like the first part, be full of pillars that support the tracks and platforms.
The station building at the back is now also covered in scaffolding. According to Gertrud Kuis of NS Stations, this has nothing to do with the conversion by Strukton and certainly not with possible subsidence or cracks due to construction.
“That is not the case. Now that the platform roofs are gone, our own contractor can easily access the rear facade for maintenance work and making windows and frames more sustainable,” says Kuis. Nothing is being done to the asymmetrical roof of the building for the time being.
Blue bridge
Pedestrians from the Rivierenbuurt are temporarily unable to reach the tracks because the southern stairs to the blue pedestrian (sky) bridge have been removed. This was necessary to start construction of the bus tunnel. The stairs will return soon and will disappear permanently during the major renovation in 2025.
The bus tunnel will not be put into use immediately afterwards. To build the northern access, the buses must first move from the new platform on the south side of the station.
In 2025, you will not immediately be able to walk from the passenger tunnel across a sunken square into the Rivierenbuurt. The municipality can only start constructing that square when Strukton no longer needs the construction site. When constructing the square, a lot of work is involved to prevent rainwater from flowing into the tunnel. While waiting for that, there will be stairs first. According to the municipality, that won’t take very long.