7.6.9 Scania Cooperation with Sjælland and the bridge over Öresund
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This article is from the Nordic countries FAQ, by Antti Lahelma and Johan Olofsson, with numerous contributions by others.
7.6.9 Scania Cooperation with Sjælland and the bridge over Öresund
There is since a few years a lot of talk in all kinds of sectors in Skåne
public life about the prospect of a cooperative region involving Sjælland
and Copenhagen. That's a goal every local politician seems to acknowledge
nowadays. There are for example ideas about common transportation cards, a
common TV channel, all kinds of cooperation projects in science, sports etc,
a common labor market, and there has even been spoken of common Olympic
Games in the year of 2008. Skåne was supposed to be a part of Copenhagen's
arrangements as cultural capital of Europe in 1996, but in the end, the
Scanian politicians decided to avoid some of its costs.
But maybe the most discussed project for better communications between
Scania and Sjælland is the bridge over Öresund:
A bridge is being built between a point just south of Malmö and the airport
of Copenhagen "Kastrup" which is the biggest airport in northern Europe. The
bridge will be 16.5 km long and will carry cars as well as trains but not
bikes. The current regional trains in Skåne and in Sjælland (the island on
which Copenhagen lies) will be connected. It will take 28 min to go from
Copenhagen to Malmö and 41 min to go to Lund. The university town of
Roskilde will be on the same connection (26 min west of Copenhagen).
The bridge was planned to be finished 1999, but is not on schedule so
current predictions are mentioning the year after. It will be financed by
the car (and of course truck) traffic whose drivers will pay a few hundred
SEK for a single trip, just below the prices of today's ferries. Train
passengers will only pay the normal price of 50 SEK in today's money. The
Swedish and Danish states will act as guarantors for the project.
The bridge was debated a lot because people were worried about hurting
environmental effects. The flow of water between the Baltic Sea and the
North Sea was one of the problems since it could be altered with damaging
effects. The current solution is supposed to make sure there is no change at
all in the water transportation. Other questions raised involved the
increased car traffic and its environmental consequences.
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