Austria’s national railways will need months to restore the country’s busiest train line after catastrophic floods wrecked infrastructure, throttling the capacity to move people and goods.
Commuters and supply chains will need to adapt after record rainfall damaged tracks, tunnels and switch-stations. About 409 millimeters (16 inches) of rain fell over five days — almost double the previous record — at St. Pölten, the provincial capital of Lower Austria, that lies at one end of the 60-kilometer (37-mile) route from Vienna.
“It was a flood of the century that caused incredible damage to rail infrastructure,” ÖBB-Infrastruktur AG board member Judith Engle said in a statement on Monday. “Reconstruction will take several months.”
The rail corridor is operating at about a quarter of its capacity. Provisional repairs are expected to raise the number of trains to about 300 a day by Oct. 10 — equivalent to its capacity in 2012. The ÖBB didn’t say how much it would cost for the repairs needed to reinstate the 550 passenger and cargo train services that transited the route daily before the floods.
Insurers expect total flood-related claims of as much as €700 million ($778 million), though that figure is likely to rise with the Austrian government tapping catastrophe funds worth €1.5 billion.
Photograph: The train track of the local railway, Pinzgauer Lokalbahn, is under water in Mitterstill, near Salzburg, Austria. Source: Breuer/Neumayr/APA/AFP/Getty Images
Related:
- Update: Central Europe Flood Deaths Rise as Citizens Race to Build Defenses
- Flooding in Central Europe Could Cause Billions in Economic Losses, Analysts Say
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