I have acknowledged this topic is entirely academic, I have also said that in the context of Vienna itself the layout will probably work alright. This is an international section of a UK forum, so forgive me if my interaction is through the lens of 'what does this mean for the UK'. If this doesn't interest you you are welcome to read on.
Rolling stock utilisation is uneconomical. The infrastructure doesn't come free either - all at Hbf-Wbf mileage incurs variable wear and tear which will need to be paid for. Level crossing downtime carries a quantifiable economic cost.
I see you've qualified the 'conflict-free' with 'almost so'. IMO 'almost' isn't good enough for the most important and busiest node in Austria, and arguably the centre of the Central European rail network. I'll wait until platforming is published for the 2026 timetable, as each routing through Meidling carries its particular set of problems, and I don't want to list every possible eventuality.
Vienna's network is built for flexibility. The problem with building for flexibility is that the movements you end up having to accommodate almost always turn out to the ones you didn't design the infrastructure for. In this instance luck came to the rescue (that the Connecting Line and Westbahnhof happen to be available. For a rail-competent country it shouldn't have come to luck. Your point about the S80 project being controversial is an important one - we've created a dependency between ramping up long-distance services to the east and a controversial / low priority project. That dependency should never have existed in the first place. I recognise that there are probably credible mitigation options on the horizon that means what's currently an annoyance won't turn into a problem - i.e. by the time Polish and Slovakian ECs
I'm advocating for discipline. Build your infrastructure to send a very clear message how that infrastructure is intended to be used - as the Dutch have done at Utrecht. I've never mentioned turning a train around in 10 minutes - so I'd appreciate if you didn't try to misrepresent my point. A 10-platform face Ostbahnhof would be more than capable of turning around the long-distance services from Stadlau / Budapest.
'Bringing all long-distance services into one station' need not mean making everything work through. All that's needed would have been building the Westbahn connection. Westbahn could have been designated the specific direction to run through to the airport and Budapest. Instead of demolishing the entire old station, one could have kept (and marginally expanded) the old terminus stations and just built one or two through islands on the current Hbf station footprint for 4tph Westbahn - Airport - Hungary movements and S80, S60 and regional trains. You would not need additional yard space for terminating long-distance trains. I believe all that could be done for a lower cost than Hbf and the whole railway estate would be more land efficient.
As for 'there *will* be more through running in the future' - that's an article of faith, which has proven unreliable and I have no reason to believe it'll be reliable for the future. Through running relies far more on uniform fleet than terminus workings. Terminus workings only require fixed formation. With terminus workings you can have different train lengths and different top speeds on different sides - for through workings you need everything compatible. You've made two statements
1) so many of our trains are international ones and there will never be a uniform fleet
2) there *will* be more through running in the future
One statement will dominate the other and in my view it's clear that 1) will dominate for the foreseeable future. 200km/h PKP units on order will be no good for the 250km/h Koralmbahn (and Semmering from 2030) timings. The way things are evolving, you'll have more Westbahn coming from Graz more Regiojet coming from the north both with very different rolling stock strategies/requirements. I think the conditions for more terminating moves being required at Hbf in the future are already baked in.
I disagree that nobody could have foreseen the current operating pattern when Hbf was being planned - the major Austrian schemes were well underway, the Czech high-speed plans were being drawn up; the international nature of the Vienna node was probably even more clear back then and liberalisation wasn't a new thing either. The basic idea of a 2tph frequency per major direction per speed profile (basically what's in the
2040 target network) wouldn't have been controversial in the early 2000s (as you wouldn't have made the Westbahn and Koralmbahn investments for anything less).
There is probably enough spare capacity in the system for those 'run through and terminate on the other side' movements. For somewhere as strategic as Vienna, such spare capacity ought to be kept 'clean' as performance buffer, not clogged with ECS movements just because you can 'get away with it'.
If you don't want to engage with any of the above (and I won't be offended), my basic point is this -
Do I think the Vienna node is a success? On the whole, yes. Do I see it as a blueprint for other node improvement projects in Britain? Almost certainly not.
