Standing in front of the new Brittenpassage today, it is hard to imagine. Less than three years ago, where the passenger tunnel is now located, all you could see was an embankment. In the years before that, we had been building the roof, but most of that work took place out of sight. For five years, we worked on the seven enormous roof sections, each weighing millions of kilos, which we slid into position beneath the A10 Zuid and the train and metro tracks during closures. Afterwards, we always carefully reinstated everything, which meant that for a long time there was little to show what was already hidden inside the embankment. Until September 2023. That month, we began excavating no less than 50,000 cubic metres of sand from beneath the train and metro tracks and the A10 Zuid. And that was when the Brittenpassage really began to take shape.
An underground cathedral
Excavating the passageway was a little like unwrapping a present. Beneath the roof sections, something resembling an underground cathedral slowly began to emerge. Not one built from pillars and sweeping vaulted ceilings, but an ingenious structure of foundation piles, columns and sheet piling. One of the first things we came across during the excavation was the intact remains of the former Amstelveenboog, the tunnel used by metro and tram line 51 until early 2019. When the tunnel disappeared (it had been demolished to make way for the future Brittenpassage) the direct tram connection between Amstelveen and Amsterdam Centraal also disappeared. For many passengers, that took some getting used to.
350 piles for the floor
Within just a few months, Nieuw-Zuid construction consortium (Mobilis, Boskalis and Van Gelder) had excavated virtually the entire southern side of the Brittenpassage. But that did not mean the construction teams could sit back and relax – there was already a tight schedule for the next stages. The Brittenpassage had a roof, but there was still no foundation for the floor. So, at the same time as the excavation work, we began installing no fewer than 350 foundation piles for the floor of the Brittenpassage. The piles had to be driven around 27 metres into the ground – quite a challenge when there were only a few metres of headroom beneath the roof. We therefore drilled the piles into the ground in 5-metre sections, welding each new section onto the one below it as we went. And we did that 350 times.
The first visitors
Of course, we also wanted to reward everyone who had been patiently waiting to see what was happening. The loyal fans who had watched the roof sections being slid into position from above since 2019 were now the first to be given a look inside the new passageway. On 11 October 2023, the moment finally arrived. They were the very first visitors to walk through the 70-metre-long Brittenpassage, which at the time was still essentially one enormous sandpit.
The breakthrough
Once work on the southern side was well under way, we also began excavating the northern side. The reason we could not excavate the entire passageway in one go was the traffic above. The final two roof sections of the Brittenpassage still had to be built and slid into position – all while road traffic, trains and metros continued to run. This meant constantly rearranging activities within the limited space above ground. At times, we were working just a few metres from the metro tracks while excavation continued ‘down below’. A special moment came in July 2024, when the excavators working from the northern and southern sides finally ‘met’. The breakthrough was complete, and just a few months later the entire Brittenpassage had been excavated.
The Brittenpassage will open on 1 November 2026. This is the first of three instalments looking back at the construction of the second passenger tunnel at Amsterdam Zuid station. In part one, we took you back to where it all began: the construction of the roof. In part three, we will tell you all about the finishing work.
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