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Is it easier to build a road tunnel under the Suez Canal than a new S-Bahn line in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein?
Amina Karam has to think about that first.
The circumstances and the systems are too different.
In Germany, years of planning, additions, legal proceedings and political disputes cause annoyance in many transport projects.
In the authoritarian ruled Egypt without participation rights, however, it was possible in the middle of the last decade to widen the Suez Canal considerably within just one year.
The government in Cairo also pushed ahead rapidly with additional buildings such as the tunnel at Port Said.
From the tunnel in Egypt to the German S-Bahn line
From 2015 to 2018 Karam led the construction of the tunnel at Port Said.
The civil engineer and native Moroccan, 37 years old, has a lot of professional experience from home and abroad.
She has been with Deutsche Bahn since February, working as a project manager on one of the most important local transport routes in the north.
The new S4 S-Bahn line will connect Hamburg with Bad Oldesloe by 2028 at the latest.
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The section between the Hasselbrook and Ahrensburg-Gartenholz stations will be completely rebuilt for this purpose.
"I feel ready for the challenge that a project like the S4 presents," says Karam in the company's administration building in City Süd.
"And I assume that we can keep to the original schedule for completing the S4 by 2027/2028."
The pressure of expectation is high that the S4 will strengthen local transport in the Hamburg metropolitan region for a calculated 1.85 billion euros construction costs.
Around 360,000 people commute to Hamburg and back home on working days without a pandemic.
Around a third of them already use public transport today.
The S4 should help to further increase this share and relieve the urban transport system.
This is urgently needed, because the number of registered cars in Hamburg itself has so far increased with the number of residents.
“250,000 people in the region will benefit from the new S4 to the northeast.
In order for the mobility transition to be a success, we have to offer people in the surrounding area an attractive option to change trains, "says Anjes Tjarks (Greens), Hamburg's Senator for Transport and Mobility Transition:" The new connection offers commuters from Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein the connection to the Hamburg underground and S-Bahn network, it relieves the roads and the main train station significantly and strengthens the rail system in the long term. "
"Now we are trying to clarify where we can get faster and better"
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So now it just has to be built, the S4.
Amina Karam has never seen her entire team for this, at least not in person.
The reason for this is the pandemic.
Few people work in the Hammerbrook railway building.
Home office is arranged; employees should currently only use their offices in justified exceptional cases.
“It's perfectly fine for me to work from home,” says Karam.
“Our IT infrastructure at Deutsche Bahn is excellent.” The new boss has a lot to do.
After years of planning and preparation, the S4 project is now becoming more visible to the city.
Source: WORLD infographic
The construction site for the first section will be set up in March, and the actual construction of the new route will begin in May.
Two new tracks will be laid between Hasselbrook and Ahrensburg over a length of 17 kilometers, and another three kilometers to Ahrensburg-Gartenholz.
The S4 will be equipped with five new stations as well as noise protection over a total of 45 kilometers.
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All permits have been received for the first construction phase, which begins in Hasselbrook.
For the two other sections, one in Hamburg, one in Schleswig-Holstein, the building permit has been applied for.
The procedure follows strict standards.
Karam's tasks also include closely coordinating the major project within Deutsche Bahn and other construction projects, such as the Hamburg elevated railway: “We had a steep learning curve in the first construction phase.
Now we are trying to clarify for the following two sections where we can get faster and better. "
"I've completely forgotten my car here"
They are not intimidated by the complexity.
After graduating from high school in Morocco, Karam studied civil engineering at the Technical University of Cologne.
In addition to her Moroccan and German citizenship, she worked for the Strabag construction company.
In 2011 she became the technical manager of the Metro in Algeria's capital, Algiers.
At that time she was 28 - and was also completing a distance learning course at the Technical University of Vienna.
With this experience and four languages - Standard Arabic, English, French and German - Karam could continue her career in many countries.
She decided on Northern Germany: "The infrastructure in Germany and the way in which Deutsche Bahn works on it fascinated me even during my studies in Cologne."
It is precisely because of her experience abroad that she sees the value of modern traffic routes: "The construction of the S4 is about optimizing an already very advanced infrastructure," says Karam.
"I have worked in countries in which there is no infrastructure at all." It is crucial "to take the people with you, the more public and concrete this project becomes, including the neighbors."
In the end, she finds a difference between her work on the Suez Canal and that in Hammerbrook.
During the tunnel construction at Port Said, she and her team lived in a military academy on the island of Port Fouad, about 15 kilometers from the construction site, for safety reasons.
Every trip to work by ferry and car, lined with checkpoints, took two and a half hours.
In Hamburg, says Karam, she simply takes a public transport to get to the office: "I've completely forgotten my car here."
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