Denmark’s Giant Bridges

Øresund, Storebaelt, Fehmarn

Linking Scandinavia and Germany with bridges and tunnels is one of the world’s most important and spectacular toll projects. Denmark is itself divided by sea channels, which in turn deny the Scandinavian peninsula fixed transportation links with continental Europe. The Baltic Sea’s outlets to the Atlantic thread their way through treacherous tidal channels among the islands that make up a large portion of what is Denmark. Whiteout fogs, fierce tidal currents and wild storms make ferry based transportation slow, expensive and dangerous.

Providing fixed crossings is an old dream now being realized. In1998 for the first time since the last Ice Age, Denmark’s main island Zealand, and hence its principal city Copenhagen will be linked with its second island Funen and with Jutland, the peninsula province north of Germany that is a contiguous part of continental Europe. Known as the Store Baelt (Great Belt) crossing this is 11.2 miles of bridge (compared to 5 miles of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge.) Its main suspension span will be just over a mile (5,328ft) a good bit longer than the 4,760ft of the George Washington bridge in New York City. In the year 2000 or 2001, about 70 miles east, an even more important fixed crossing will open, a crossing of the Øresund (The Sound) between Copenhagen and the Swedish city of Malmo. It is 10 miles across the Øresund and the link will consist of a 2.5 mile tunnel with the roadways rising into an artificial island several miles long created from dredging in the Sound and then 4.8 miles of bridge which will climax in a 3,583 foot cable stayed span, one of the world’s largest of this kind which involves an 833 foot tower (Cable stayed bridges require fairly steeply angled stays and so very high towers.)

Cost of the two projects is $8.6 billion, with the money borrowed in world capital markets based on prospective toll revenues and government loan guarantees. The official material on these projects takes note of the fact that they are being “financed by the users.” All the crossings are 4 lanes of highway and 2 rail tracks.

The Øresund bridge/tunnel crossing as well as linking the whole Sandinavian peninsula of Sweden and Norway directly to Denmark and Germany will probably have the effect of creating a new Scandinavian metropolis. Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmo, Sweden will be brought together to form the largest metro area in Scandinavia with over 3 million people living within a 30 mile radius of the Link. International commuting will become commonplace.

Says the consortium building the link (wonderfully named the Øresundskonsortiet): “The purpose of the Link is to remove the traffic barrier which the Øresund constitutes today in order to create an economic, cultural and traffic growth center in northern Europe.”

It is interesting that a “traffic growth center” is portrayed as a positive thing! This is a reference to the Øresund Link as a way of Danes doing business more conveniently in Norway and Sweden and of giving southern Swedes the option of conveniently using Copenhagen’s large airport and a quicker route into Germany and the rest of Europe, whether by rail or road. Germans, Dutch, French and Belgians will find it far easier to visit Sweden and Norway via the fixed crossings. Copenhagen airport is right by the Zealand approaches to the Øresund Link and commuter and interurban rail stations are being built into a new main airport terminal building. The designers claim that the rail airplane transfer will be the shortest and quickest in the world. Motor vehicles will have direct access to airport parkling garages from ramps from the Link expressway.

Denmark has a rather good expressway system but Sweden and Norway have no ‘system’ at all, just bits and pieces of limited access highway here and there, but the Øresund Link is expected to spur a program of filling the gaps. From Oslo Norway just 400 miles as the crow flies to Hamburg Germany is currently a 16 hour trip by rail-ferry or car-ferry, and will be reduced to 10 or 11 hours by 2001 when the ferries are retired.

The highway route being opened up by the Øresund and Store Baelt crossing will be known as the E20 east-west and then on Jutland the E45 expressway which runs north-south the length of the Jutland peninsula.

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There is another even more direct route into Germany in contemplation that could reduce the Oslo Hamburg trip another couple of hours. The Danes are currently investigating the feasibility of a link to Germany over what is called the Fehmarn Baelt which would provide a direct 180 mile expressway route south-westerly between Copenhagen and Hamburg compared to the west on E20 over the Links under construction, then south on E45, which is 260 miles. Lolland island just south of Zealand is already connected to Copenhagen by two road bridges, and the Fehmarn Baelt, 12.5 miles of open sea between Lolland and Germany’s small Fehmarn peninsula, would allow greater integration of the Copenhagen and southern Sweden region with the huge north German economic and port complex of Hamburg, Lubeck and Kiel. Sweden has recently cast off its former democratic-socialist aloofness and has joined the European community and the new highway links will help the process of European integration.

The Øresund and Store Baelt Links are shaping up as splendid works of grand engineering art and a source of justified pride in local enterprise and design and construction skills.

Most of the work so far is being done by European companies but the U.S. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company is part of the tunnel team in the Øresund Link. (Contact: Jacob Vestergaard, Director Public Affairs, Øresundskonsortiet, Copenhagen fax 45 3341 6102.)