SETBACK FOR TOLLS Stockholm tunnel ring stopped

SETBACK FOR TOLLS

Stockholm tunnel ring stopped

A court case and a political furore over costs and resident protests have led to a halt in construction on the $2.5b+ Stockholm ring road project. Amid this the Swedish government recently announced it is abandoning the most controversial Osterleden or eastern section of the ring road and that it will consider tax alternatives to toll funding. $150m worth of tunneling has been done on the Norra Lanken or northern section and for now the government says it wants to complete the northern and southern arms, but it is negotiating with opposition parties and protest groups to try rebuild a political consensus. A western section at grade or elevated was built in the 1960s, and the northern and southern links will help reduce surface traffic. But without the eastern section much of the transport rationale of the system seems lost, according to advocates of the project, and it is difficult to manage it with tolls. For now it is destined to be a big-C in plan!

Most underground: As designed the system involved 40km of mainly 1, 2 and 3-lane driven rock tunnels which included six completely underground interchanges. It involved 28 toll stations at the entry/exits to the ring. Together with the existing western section the plan would have constituted a two-way circle route 20km long with 21 full or partial interchanges, the general alignment being at 2km to 3km radius from the center of the Swedish capital city and at the end of major major arterial routes, being on the fringe of the dense historic center. The rationale was to take traffic off city streets and to price it by automatic tolling. Many of the interchange ramps were designed to prevent traffic entering the densest part of the city and direct it around or into parking buildings.12km of the 14km of the three new sections were to be underground but ventilation towers, the 2km open sections, and construction disturbance to a park and river were rallying points for protests. A court ordered work to be stopped recently saying environmental concerns had not been properly dealt with in the permitting stage. The government was also under attack for soaring cost estimates and because of the handling of protesters in a park.

Part of transit & roads: The ring road project was the most spectacular of $7b worth of transport projects for the Swedish capital (pop 1m) negotiated in 1992 by Bengt Dennis at that time governor of the Bank of Sweden. The socalled Dennis Agreement was supported by all the major political parties including the social democrats, conservatives and liberals, as well as the city and county governments. It involved a equal mix of transit and highway improvements — the major components of which were the underground ring and a western outer bypass of the city, also with long sections underground (9km). Tolls were central to the financing of the highway projects under the Dennis Agreement so recent events are an unexpected breakdown in the Swedish political process and a major setback to an apparent deal between transport planenrs and environmentalists. The ring road project did not involve any private finance, operation or ownership and was a project of the Swedish National Road Administration. (We'll follow up this project in future issues of TR)