The strategic role of the former railway bridge at Dunaföldvár

Bence Tóth; Zsolt Lévai

doi:10.17047/Hadtud.2021.31.E.67

Bence Tóth Department of Natural Sciences, Faculty of Military Sciences and Officer Training, University of Public Service https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3958-187X
Zsolt Lévai Doctoral School of Military Engineering, University of Public Service; research fellow, KTI Institute for Transort Sciences https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2410-1730

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17047/Hadtud.2021.31.E.67

Keywords: railway, Danube bridge, graph theory, critical infrastructure, redundancy

Abstract

With the suspension of the investment into the V0 railway line, the issue of the railway lines bypassing Budapest came to the front again. As an alternative of building a new railway line, the development of existing ones or the rebuilding of lines that have been in operation in the past should be examined. In this paper, we deal with a previously operated, now discontinued Danube crossing facility, the Solt–Dunaföldvár railway bridge. Although this crossing was of minor importance during its operation, it is worth examining the role it can play should it be rebuilt with parameters required for a TEN-T railway line. According to our graph-theory based calculations, such a bridge cannot only be part of the only reasonable detour if the Southern Railway Bridge in Budapest is disrupted but can also be a facility disencumbering it under normal operational conditions.