This was the quotation from the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen this past week in his defense of advocating for the building of a DKK (that's the ISO code for the money used in Denmark) 27 Billion tunnel running 12 kilometers/7.5 miles from northeast of the city center (The North Harbor/"Nordhavn") east through the island of Amager around to the southwest where it would join with the country's E20 motorway which heads both east to the bridge to Sweden and west to the bridge over to the island of Funen ("Fyn" in Danish) and then to Jutland.


YES, TWENTY-SEVEN-BILLION-WITH-A-"B" DANISH KRONER! 
(And the cost could be even higher) 

Even if it is paid out using coins made with holes and/or embossed hearts or bills/notes currently printed with pictures of pagan relics (and ironically, bridges) on them (they used to have moths, sparrows and Hans Christian Andersen) that's a lot of real money; At current exchange rates that works out to 4.6 Billion U.S. Dollars or 3.6 Billion Euros! 

Let's put these costs in some perpective: 
 

• The Storbælt or "Great Belt" Bridge which links the east and west parts of Denmark was completed in 1998 at a cost of DKK 21.8 Billion (on a 1988 price basis), so adjusted for inflation, that would be about DKK 37.6 Billion today.
• The Øresund Bridge which links Copenhagen to Malmö and therefore Denmark to Sweden, was finished in 2000 at a cost of DKK 30.1 Billion (The crossing is shorter than the Storbælt) on year 2000 basis.  So adjusted for inflation, this bridge would cost about DKK 38.6 Billion today.
• Even the Proposed Fehmarn Link from Denmark to Germany is pencilling in at 7.9 Billion Euro (DKK 59 Billion)

1995 Storbælt Ferry Fares

Remember though, the above are very long fixed-links (16-plus kilometers) over/under salt-water that have all included a two-track railway in their construction, and these bridges perform a task that has helped to in the case of Storbælt, connect the provinces to the capital, and in the case of Øresund, unify the Copenhagen-Malmö region and connect Denmark to Asia the rest of Scandinavia.  

(The fixed-link to Germany is more controversial because a route from Sweden through Denmark to Germany has already been created by using the two bridges plus Jutland, but it certainly has a potential market)
 

2012 Storbælt Bridge Tolls

When  looking at these project costs, please keep in mind that these facilities charge a toll that is comparable to the fare of the ferries they replaced or still partially compete with; which is certainly not the case for similar projects in other parts of the world.

So this "Eastern Bypass" (the new name intended to attract funding from the national government) is a project that will cost 70% of what the fixed-link bridge projects did, but offers Copenhagen no parallel capacity for rail (which actually does need more capacity through the city center), and doesn't do anything for the nation or the region, or the EU as a whole.  It merely "promises" to remove congestion from the city center.

 

Congestion, it turns out, is an inevitable consequence when the private sector produces an unlimited number of vehicles and expects the public sector to spend limited resources to build an unlimited amount of space for them to run on. ---Gordon Price, Transport Planner and former City Councillor, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 

Current Motorway Network around Copenhagen

One has to wonder if the Public-Private-Partnership that is proposing to build this sewer tunnel really thinks that motorists in Copenhagen, who already moan about how much they pay to own their horseless carriages, are going to shell out a toll to use this tunnel that is going to have to be at least DKK 200 (USD 34/EUR 27) (i.e. is the equivalnt to 70% of those current bridge tolls) in order to pay off the facility at the rate that the bridges are doing?  Especially when there is an existing untolled Western Bypass (called Motor-ring 3) that offers the northern suburbs similar access to/from the E20 motorway? 

(We'll discuss the false promise of ring roads and by-passes, as well as tunneling projects cost in later posts)

Or is something-else afoot here?  Is Copenhagen about to "pee in its pants to keep warm"?



 

Interchange proposal for Long Bridge

The Lord Mayor actually spoke, of course, in his native Danish and said: "Men bilerne er altså kommet for at blive, og de bliver renere og renere." but our headline is an acceptable translation, and that's disturbing because he is seemingly accepting that if cars don't pollute out of the tailpipe, then they don't pollute period and their presence is perfectly okay.  This of course ignores the noise and other pollutants that foul the environment such as rubber particles from tires and oil from lubricants.  Not to mention the logistics of these new motor vehicles and how they are powered.  Say, did you know that cars need storage when they aren't in use?


 

He goes on, in the original Berlingske News Bureau article on which the Copenhagen Post article is based, to say "Så derfor skal vi også sørge for, at trafikken kan afvikles ordentligt, så vi ikke spilder tid, når folk sidder i kø," or, and kind reader you are free to contribute a better translation in the comments section, "We therefore must ensure that traffic can flow properly so we don't waste the time (of people who chose to travel by private car) when they sit in queues".  

In other words, the top official of the city that had promised to be the first carbon-free city on Earth in the 21st century has just also promised that his city will, because of course it must, don't you know, accomodate and move more cars.