On Saturday 21 December, 11:55 a.m., a police car drove through the right-hand tube of the Pohůrka tunnel, followed by the first users of the newly opened section of the D3 Úsilné - Kaplice railway station. This was preceded by a ceremony with speeches by political representatives (Minister of Transport, Governor of the South Bohemian Region and Mayor of České Budějovice), the investor (ŘSD, SFDI) and the contractors (HOCHTIEF CZ, Doprastav and MI Roads) and the cutting of a symbolic ribbon.. The newly opened section is more than 28 km long and consists of three connecting structures Úsilné - Hodějovice (7.2 km), Hodějovice - Třebonín (12.5 km) and Třebonín - Kaplice Nádraží (8.5 km). An important mission of the whole section is the motorway bypass of the regional town of České Budějovice, which has thus got rid of the transit of the exposed Prague - Linz road.
METROPROJEKT contributed to this event by designing the 999 m long Pohůrka tunnel, for which it prepared all stages of the project documentation. The designing of this tunnel was not without problems. First, the tunnel structure was designed as a composite frame , then it was changed to the Milan construction method with underground walls, only to return to the original conceptual idea of a rigid frame structure built in a cased construction pit in the actual implementation. This last change took place on the fly, so to speak, after the start of the construction in 2019 and after subsequent thorough geotechnical and load testing of the actual underground wall segments. We are convinced that the commissioned tunnel is in the end a quality work with the prospect of a long service life. We have also designed all the technological equipment for the tunnel, which is ready for a future travel speed of 100 km/h. Thanks for the final tunnel design go to the entire team of designers, especially Tomáš Urbánek for the final design of the tunnel structure and David Benda, the chief engineer of the entire project.
