Bergen Light Rail

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section contains information about a planned or expected public transportation infrastructure.
It may contain information of a speculative nature and the content may change dramatically as the construction and/or completion of the infrastructure approaches, and more information becomes available.

**Bergen Light Rail**
Locale	Bergen, Norway
Transit type	Light rail
Began operation	2010
System length	9.8 km
No. of lines	1
No. of stations	14
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8½ in)
Operator

Bergen Light Rail (Norwegian: Bybanen) is a proposed and under contruction light rail system in Bergen, Norway. The first stage of the project is a 9.8 km stretch between the City Centre to Nesttun, estimated to be finished in 2010. Further plans for the project involve three lines, stretching to Åsane, Storavatnet and Bergen Airport, Flesland.

1 History
2 Plans
3 Criticism
4 External links

[edit] History

The first public transport in Bergen was the Bergen Tramway that operated between 1897 and 1965. Already in the 1960s suburban tram lines were suggested, but the idea fell out of the public domain during the 1970s. In the 1960s the sale of cars in Norway was deregulated, resulting in an explosion of car use, and the number of public transport users has since fallen dramatically. To meet the increased number of cars, polticians in Bergen began a massive investment in motorways throughout the city in the 1980s and 1990s financed with toll plaza, but by the 2000s the congestion had again caught up with the building of new roads.

To effectively address the problem of congestion, the politicians decided to build a light rail system in the city. The initial plans involved a line from the city centre via Nesttun to the airport at Flesland. It became part of a political compromise, Bergensprogrammet, that ensured a number of road investments along with the light rail, again financed with toll plazas. But in the end a lack of funds made it necesary to only build the line to Nesttun, and not all the way to the airport. The initial decision was made in Bergen City Council on November 27, 2000, in the Norwegian legislature in 2002 and with the fiancing in place by the city council in 2005. Only the Progress Party and Pensioners Party voted against.

[edit] Plans

The first stretch of the line will be the 9.8 km stretch between the city centre and Nesttun, to be operated on a 5 minute headway by all-stop and express trains, with 10 minute headway in off-peak times and one hour headway at night. The Bergensprogram states that the second line between Nesttun and the airport will be built at a later stage.

There is also another more ambitious plan that involves expanding the line to other parts of the city, including from the city centre to Sandviken and Åsane, to Loddefjord via Haukeland University Hospital and Fyllingsdalen. The plans also include an expansion of the Bergen trolleybus to Oasen and Paradis.

Operation of the system will be managed by the Hordaland county administration, though no operator has been chosen. Both Tide, the operator of the city buses, and Gråkallbanen, who operates the Trondheim Tramway and is owned by Veolia Transport Norway, have announced that they wish to operate the system.

[edit] Criticism

The main criticism towards the project has been that the project costs a lot more than other modes of public transport, including bus transport. Especially the investment costs are large. Gaia Trafikk, that operated the city bus at the time, suggested building a bus rapid transit system instead. Other criticism has been directed a the fact that the financing of the project comes from toll collections throughout the city, while only the southern part of the city gets any benefit from the project.