Good news for everyone who wants to take the subway to the Mainfest: Just in time for the popular city festival, the Dom/Römer subway station will be back in service from Wednesday, August 1, and will be served by trains on the U4 and U5 lines. This means that the station will be available as normal. Although the work is not yet fully completed, operations will not be affected.
For a little more than five months, the station was closed for rail operations. Since mid-February, the trains had not stopped due to extensive fire protection work in the station, several times the entire section was also briefly closed between the main station and Konstablerwache for the entire subway operation. As part of an overall fire protection renovation, VGF installed smoke protection partitions and removed and replaced most of the technical components installed in the station. The costs for this amounted to around six million euros.
Compared to the original planning, VGF expanded the processing framework in the station and took modern technical developments into account when replacing and installing new elements. In addition, the building fabric in the station, which opened on 26 May 1974, required more extensive renovation than was previously apparent.
The upgrades are not visible to passengers, as they are located in ceiling voids and technical areas that are not accessible. Externally, the station looks the same as usual, which was entirely intentional as the original design was not to be changed.
Opening earlier than originally planned
The VGF had originally planned to have the station up and running by the end of the holiday period and therefore on Monday, August 6. As work progressed, it was said that the opening of the Altstadt had been brought forward to the end of July, whereupon VGF tightened its schedule in order to be able to go into operation on 21 July. Since the Old Town Festival has since been fixed for September, this schedule was no longer necessary. In order to be able to complete the work optimally without deadline pressure, the commissioning was then set for August 1 - and thus in time for the Mainfest, still before the end of the holidays and before the original date.
