Oresund toll bridge now famous as a sex position

There's lots of publicity in Sweden over advertising which uses the name of the Oresund Bridge-Tunnel to describe a sex position. Following the old adage that sex sells, Liten Butik (Littlies Boutique?) a children's clothing store chain based in Stockholm produced an advertising spread with sketches of some 24 sex positions.

The risque ad for children's gear has the tagline: "You make the customers, we'll make the clothes."

The ad is running in a mainstream magazine named Mama (Mother).

One of the 24 positions is called Oresundsbron (Oresund Bridge) the Swedish name for the Oresund Bridge Tunnel that links Malmo Sweden to Copenhagen Denmark in the narrow neck of the Baltic Sea called the Oresund Channel.

The sex position is hardly reflected in the bridge itself. It's a twin tower cable stayed bridge - a very proper looking affair to our eye.

The logo's the thing

It seems the naming is a takeoff of the logo for the Oresundsbron intended to capture in a sinuous graphic the movement from a tunnel to a bridge, which perhaps has that leaning back look to it - though it seems a bit of a stretch.

In media

The story has been quite an item in the media in Sweden and Denmark the past few days. The publicity got a boost when the toll bridge operators complained that their trademark was being abused by being attached to the sex position.

Anna Holm spokesman for the Oresund consortium said: "Of course we don't like having our trademark abused."

But there wasn't much they could do about it, she said.

Andreas Carlsson, the boss at the children's clothes store Liten Butik says he doesn't see why he shouldn't use the Oresundsbron name saying the sex position in question really does look like the toll authority's logo. Moreover, he says, the term is in common use in Swedish bedrooms.

BACKGROUND:

(On the bridge-tunnel, not on the other 23 positions) The Oresundsbron is 16km (10 miles) long and consists of, from the Danish side eastward:

- 4km (2.5mi) tunnel made of 20 large prefabricated tubes of three cells one for each direction of road traffic, the other for trains

- 4.2km (2.6mi) of largely artificial island made from dredge material as the transition

- 7.8km (4.8mi) of bridge with a cable stayed twin tower shipping channel mainspan of 490m (1608ft) the bridging carrying rail in its proper position underneath the road.

The bridge-tunnel carries two traffic lanes each direction plus two rail lines, and cost. It was authorized by the two governments in 1991 and a binational corporation Oresundsbro Konsortiet formed with ownership 50% by government agencies of Denmark, 50% by government agencies of Sweden. Tolls are collected on motor vehicles and the national railroads of each country pay agreed fees for pasaage of their trains.

Oresundsbron (the Danes drop the final 'n') opened July 1, 2000.

Construction cost about $3.1b and total capital outlaid was around $4b.

Tolling is at a 2x11 lane toll plaza on the Swedish side, with 2x9 toll lanes that are either manned or allow use of multimode machines for payment by cash or card. There are single toll lanes each direction for cars with transponders signed for speeds of 30km/hr (18mph) and another lane each direction for trucks with transponders.

Charging for depreciation of $58m in 2006, there was a declared loss of $20m. However with an adjustment of the value of the asset of $122m the result was $101m profit.

Traffic was below forecast for the first couple of years but has grown by double digit annual percentages since and is now about on track with the business plan:

- 2001 8.1k

- 2002 9.4k

- 2003 10.4k

- 2004 11.8k

- 2005 13.6k

- 2006 15.8k

2006 saw a 16% increase to average daily 15.8k of which 5.3% are trucks and 1% buses.

Rail sees some 14k people a day moving across the facility in trains, compared to some 36k people who use motor vehicles. Freight is almost entirely road based, though some trucks still use ferries, which were the major crossing mode before the opening of the bridge-tunnel.

Toll rates decline with usage

Cash tolls are $44 for cars (E34) and $173 (E133) for tractor trailers (>12m) but a transponder branded BroPass costs a $43 (E30) annual fee plus a toll per trip for cars that varies from $34 for one or two trips a year to $19 for 11 to 50 trips a year to $17 for 250 to 1,000 trips. There are also multi-trip tickets for cars of $308 (E237) for ten trips.

Tractor trailers (trucks >12m) pay per trip tolls with a transponder varying from $140 for 1 or 2 to $122 for 51 to 500 trips per year and $100/trip for 6,000 to 10k trips/yr.

The Orsesundsbro is now the world's premier bridge-tunnel facility though the Hampton Roads area of Virginia centered on Norfolk can still lay claim to being the pioneer and world's capital of bridge-tunnels with three in number, and the world's longest still in the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.

see http://osb.oeresundsbron.dk/frontpage/?lang=1

TOLLROADSnews 2007-03-26