High-speed rail in Norway from Oslo to Trondheim

Thursday, November 26, 2009

That's the subject of an article here in Norwegian which goes over the (still quite low) possibility of a high-speed rail connection between the two cities. The main reason for the low probability for this is probably the fact that one doesn't even exist between the two largest cities of Oslo and Bergen (304 km) compared to 389 km between Oslo and Trondheim.


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First let's take a look at existing and planned high-speed rail in Norway:



Line name and end points
Length
Cost
Construction start
Completion
Gardermobanen: Oslo - Eidsvoll
67 km
$1.4 billion
1994
1999
Vestfoldbanen: Drammen - Sande
17 km
-
-
2001
Vestfoldbanen: Sande - Nykirke
14 km
$770 million
2011
2014
Vestfoldbanen: Barkåker - Tønsberg
8 km
$270 million
2009
2011
Vestfoldbanen: Larvik - Porsgrunn
23 km
$660 million
2011
2015
Dovrebanen: Eidsvoll - Stange
40 km
$1.2 billion
2011
-
Follobanen: Oslo - Ski
24 km
$2 billion
2013
2018


As you can see, not all that much at the moment. Now for other possible routes:


Route
Present airplane passengers daily
Present train passengers daily
Flying distance
Current distance by train
Oslo - Trondheim
4.400
1.300
390 km
550 km
Oslo - Bergen
4.500
1.900
300 km
530 km
Oslo - Stavanger
3.500
1.100
300 km
600 km
Oslo - Copenhagen
3.600
400
480 km
700 km
Oslo - Stockholm
2.900
500
420 km
540 km

And now a few parts from the article today in Norwegian:
A new high-speed rail route between Trondheim and Oslo will cost around 80 billion krone ($14.2 billion), a sum that the community would be unlikely to pay. According to Tore Sandvik in Sør-Trøndelag: "It is unthinkable that such an investment would happen without a route between Bergen and Oslo also being built. That would cost 180 billion ($32 billion). We have a huge investment in railways in the state budget this year, but that is just a fraction of what this line will cost."

The Norwegian parliament has approved a study taking a look at a line between the two large cities, in order to create a basis to make a decision in 2013.

The article also mentions that the line would probably be paid for over 30 years at an interest rate of five percent. In order to get the travel time between the two cities down to below four hours one would need a train with a speed of 160 kph, but the problem here is that the existing rail is a century old with a curve radius (not sure if that's the right term) of 300 metres, but this needs to be increased to 1200 metres to bring a train up to a speed of 160 kph. The high-speed rail envisioned between the two cities would have a speed of 300 kph.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a waste of money, as existing rail usage is reasonably high you would expect with improvements made to the existing system more peole would use rail. Since Norway has 3rd world highways moeny should be spent on the road network before wasting money on rail.

Anonymous said...

What a waste of money, as existing rail usage is reasonably high you would expect with improvements made to the existing system more peole would use rail. Since Norway has 3rd world highways moeny should be spent on the road network before wasting money on rail.

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