North/South Metro Line Amsterdam

The North South metro line will be 9.7 km long of which little over 7 km will be subsurface. The line will have eight stations at an average distance of 1.2 km. The line will begin above ground at Buikslotermeerplein, in the Northern part of Amsterdam, and from there it will gradually descend until after the second station, Johan van Hasseltweg, it will go completely underground. The river IJ will be passed by an immersed tunnel and the Central Railway Station of Amsterdam will also be passed by means of an immersed tunnel. New and innovative construction technology is used to make this possible. After that, it will run beneath the historic centre and the district to the Southern part of Amsterdam known as De Pijp.

The underground part of the route will comprise 7.1 km, including 3.8 km of bored tunnel. The line will resurface again between the stations Europaplein and Zuid. There the North South metro line will join the existing network of trains, buses, trams and the existing metro line. The construction of the line requires a great variety of different construction methods. Part of the project is built using traditional methods like cut and cover, but due to the challenging conditions, soft soils and high water table combined with historical buildings founded on piles, also new construction methods like vertical micro tunnelling and a hybrid construction like the sandwich wall are used. The part of the track tunnels underneath the old inner city is built using tunnel boring machines with an external diameter of 7.1 m. The TBM is specifically designed to deal with the difficult circumstances.

The project has a unique monitoring system that acts as an early warning system. In total the position of 6.500 points is measured every hour with great accuracy to monitor the displacement of adjacent buildings an other structures. The system is fully automatic and generates valuable information about the building process.