Norway drops plans for high-speed Oslo-Trondheim trains

CIE

Norway Post

Minister of Transport and Communications, Marit Arnstad, says she will not give priority to the building of high speed trains between Oslo and Trondheim.

In her opinion there are other tasks within the transport sector which are more important, and she will instead give priority to developing the InterCity train services around the larger cities in South Eastern Norway, and in the Bergen region on the West Coast. ...

Norway's fastest trains on their InterCity service appear to be the Class 73 EMUs, which top out at 130 mph; they and the Class 71 are derivatives of Sweden's X2(000). The El 18 electric engines have a top speed of 125 mph. They also have the Class 74 DMUs (Stadler FLIRT) which also have a top speed of 125 mph.

Aard

I was always skeptical of Norway's HSR plans. It's ridiculously mountainous in most of the country, which doesn't lend itself to direct routing. Also, there's a comprehensive air-route network in the country. For example, most sane people just fly from Oslo to Bergen.

bk

Aard wrote: »

For example, most sane people just fly from Oslo to Bergen.

If you travel this journey frequently, then you are right.

But if you are visiting Norway as a tourist, I highly recommend taking the train for this journey. The scenery is simply spectacular. You'll spend the whole journey looking out the window with your mouth on the floor.

Well worth visiting Norway for.

LivelineDipso

Aard wrote: »

I was always skeptical of Norway's HSR plans. It's ridiculously mountainous in most of the country, which doesn't lend itself to direct routing. Also, there's a comprehensive air-route network in the country. For example, most sane people just fly from Oslo to Bergen.

I have been there several times. They have the money and the engineering. There are bridges and impressive tunnels under Fjords which they build without thinking about. They just do it.

In Ireland we like to spend 3 decades talking about extending the DART - issue 1,0001,53205,000 reports and then end up putting up a new bus shelter.

The important aspect of this story is they are using the money to improve the already excellent rail network.

Rail still gets the investment.

murphaph

LivelineDipso wrote: »

Rail still gets the investment.

Indeed, their rail system is far superior to ours (almost goes without saying) and they already have what we would consider high speed rail!

dowlingm

the Norwegians have the freedom of action that not being shackled to the ECB brings, plus a determination not to p!ss away their oil revenue on bog all.

murphaph

dowlingm wrote: »

the Norwegians have the freedom of action that not being shackled to the ECB brings, plus a determination not to p!ss away their oil revenue on bog all.

To be honest the second part is the only part that counts. Most of the countries who are shackled to the ECB have far superior rail systems to us, especially commuter rail in their cities...even Greece!

We had a rural dominated parliament for so long that any investment in cities was seen as "socially unjust" unless "equivalent" investment was made in (hare brained) rural schemes. That's our main problem...an identity crisis when it comes to our urban/rural divide.

If we had/have Norwegian type oil reserves, expect every hare brained scheme to be looking for funding from it...monorail to Donegal? No problem! 5km tunnel in Dublin to link existing infrastructure? Crazy idea!

Joke of a country in many respects still.

Tabnabs

Here were the proposed routes for the Bergensbanen:


Flying can be expensive and weather dependent just as the rail line is. Nothing is straight forward and so the demand will remain in pockets of the population.

dowlingm

murphaph wrote: »

To be honest the second part is the only part that counts. Most of the countries who are shackled to the ECB have far superior rail systems to us, especially commuter rail in their cities...even Greece!

To be fair, that was driven by the Athens Olympics.

murphaph wrote: »

If we had/have Norwegian type oil reserves, expect every hare brained scheme to be looking for funding from it...monorail to Donegal? No problem! 5km tunnel in Dublin to link existing infrastructure? Crazy idea!

Not to mention that in the name of "cross border cooperation" half the roads in NI would be rebuilt with ROI money before any was spent on a yard of crossborder rail to allow even something basic like 100mph hourly service Dublin-Belfast with grade separation (rail OVER road) in tetchy communities known for mischief...

Solair

There are a few other factors that favour rail in Norway too though.

It doesn't have scattered populations, rather it tends to have tight planning with fairly concentrated towns / cities. This is partially due to better planning and also due to harsher conditions which prevent scatter-development as you simply would struggle to cope out on your own.

The terrain, sheer scale of the country and climate also tend to make long-distance driving less practical than it is in Ireland. So, historically rail made more sense, although nowadays people fly a lot because of the distances involved it's not too practical to take long train journeys cross-country.

We generally do not have harsh winters, the country's mostly relatively rolling countryside with very few difficult to cross mountainous areas and the distances are relatively short.

So, unless we moved everyone into towns/cities (never going to happen), I just can't see the economies of scale for serious rail here.

Even our suburban areas are all relatively low density scatter stuff, more like the US than Europe.

This way of doing things is the option that Irish people voted for, time and time again. We don't seem to like the idea of tightly planned communities. That's a perfectly valid choice, but it comes at the cost of things like decent public transport and access to things like high-speed broadband becomes very difficult / expensive.

However, people still seem to prefer their big pad out in Kildare or Mallow etc rather than a bus/train and broadband in a tighter planned urban area close to Dublin, Cork etc.

It's all a trade off!

nokia69

Solair wrote: »

However, people still seem to prefer their big pad out in Kildare or Mallow etc rather than a bus/train and broadband in a tighter planned urban area close to Dublin, Cork etc.

It's all a trade off!

people prefer the big self build because the other choice is so poor

irish property developers build the smallest houses in Europe, the average 3 bed semi in ireland is a joke, a friend of mine paid 430K for his, if his family owed some land they would have gave him a site and he could have built his own house for far less that 430K

joke of a country