Essen Station
Description:
Essen Station is the main railway station in the city of Essen (the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia). The station building is located on the border of the urban areas of Stadtkern and Sudfiertel. Essen Station is one of the most important transport hubs of both the Ruhr region and North Rhine-Westphalia as a whole. The Essen station sends up to 170,000 passengers daily. According to the German classification system, Essen station belongs to category 1, which ranks it among the 20 main stations of the country.
The station was opened on 1 March 1862 as a station of the Witten/Dortmund-Oberhausen/Duisburg railway section between Bochum and Mühlheim-on-Ruhr. This station was not the first station on the territory of modern Essen - as early as 1847 Borbeck station was opened (Borbeck became part of Essen in 1914).
In 2008-2010 a large-scale reconstruction of the station was carried out. Initially, it was planned to reconstruct railway stations in addition to Essen in 4 more cities of North Rhine-Westphalia: Duisburg, Dortmund, Münster and Wuppertal, for which the land budget provided for the amount of 350 million euros. However, the planned reconstruction took place only in Essen. In 2010, Essen was chosen as the European Capital of Culture.
Total expenditure of approximately $57 million
During the reconstruction, the station received 5,700 m2 of retail space, the main passage was expanded, 2 glass pavilions were added to the south side, which housed the tourist center and the subscriber service department of the Essen Transport Association (EVAG), on the roof of which solar panels were located, capable of generating up to 23,300 kWh of electricity per year. The glass rotunda of the cafe was demolished, and instead a rectangular pavilion was built, which housed fast food restaurants.
The official opening took place on January 16, 2010 in the presence of Federal Minister of Railways Peter Ramsauer, Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Jürgen Ruettgers and President of Deutsche Bahn AG Rüdiger Grube.
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