Sopron – The construction of the Vienna Hill Tunnel is progressing with excellent quality and on schedule, carried out safely with the assistance of Hungarian experts and our own specialized equipment. Designing and constructing a tunnel like the Vienna Hill Tunnel presents numerous challenges, especially due to geological uncertainties. The development of the internal installation system also poses significant challenges, but our teams are successfully managing them!

This unique and exceptional project of the Duna Group involves the construction of the M85 expressway section between Fertőrákos and the Hungarian-Austrian border near Sopron, including the 780-meter-long tunnel pair through Vienna Hill and the creation of the bypass route 8647around northwest Sopron. The project also features two engineering structures and one grade-separated junction on the expressway, and on the route8647 three roundabouts, five engineering structures, and a railway crossing will be made.

The Vienna Hill Tunnel and the associated road network are being executed by the SDD Consortium (which includes Dömper Kft., a member of the Duna Group), the works reached their final stages. Within the project, the bypass 8647 was built as a 4-kilometer-long two-lane road connecting the M85 and Ágfalvi Road way out west of Sopron. The technical handover of this part of the execution has been completed, and the contractor will hand over the new urban bypass and its connecting elements to commuters about three months earlier than scheduled.

In the case of the Vienna Hill Tunnel, the final structural concreting activities were completed in last December, thus besides the post-production works of the structure construction one of the remaining tasks of the builders included the disassembly of the machinery used for constructing the final structure, requiring time, space, and logistics at the eastern and western forecourts of the tunnel.

After completing the structural works, a significant change occurred at the site, as the mobile concrete plant, the workshop tent, depots associated with the mixing plant, and other stored materials were dismantled and removed from the eastern preamble worksite. This allowed the final construction of the pavement structure of the expressway connecting to the eastern and western foregrounds of the tunnel. The gabion walls supporting the eastern and western tunnel portals were also completed, on the eastern side, the placement of closing stones and maintenance walkways was already finalized, by the end of April the noise barrier is nearing completion, with landscaping in progress.

In both passages of the tunnel the pavement structure is also completed, a 30 cm FZKA layer was built to the counter-arch, a 17 cm Ckt-4 hydraulic binding layer, and a 4 cm thick AC-11 separating asphalt layer as well. The 26 cm thick CP4/2.7 basalt concrete, forming the topmost layer of the pavement that needed a special working line was completed in the last days of April. Cutting and sealing the pavement surface is ongoing.

On the southern tunnel wall, the final coating system has been applied up to 5 meters in height, in the northern passage the coating application is being finalized following the completion of the basalt concrete work. The installation and cabling of the horizontal and vertical traffic control systems are in progress, and all JET fans have been installed after trial operations. The final lighting fixtures, active prisms, and emergency passages' special gates have been installed. The electrical distribution cabinets for emergency call booths are being activated, and the special doors for the booths have arrived and been installed and connected. The sharp setting of the electrical joint-boxes of the mayday niches is in progress, the special doors of the niches arrived alright to the worksite, they were installed.

The main remaining tasks for the contractors until the notification of completion will include the live testing of the traffic and control technology elements already installed in a great part and the activation and comprehensive testing of the SCADA software responsible for tunnel management and the test run of the elements of the system.