Harbour Tunnel or a Better City?

Fellini's 8 1/2 was a comedy. Kind of like Copenhagen City Hall at the moment.

Yep, it's the early 1950s at Copenhagen City Hall. Tonight, politicians voted yes to a harbour tunnel that will cost our city a whopping 27 BILLION kroner. ($4.5 billion)

Despite the fact that the only damned thing we know from a century of traffic engineering is that when you create more space for cars, more cars appear.

See a vision of City Hall's tunnel here.

Lars Barfred, who writes here on the site, has done some rational calculations. For about the same price as a ridiculous harbour tunnel, we could have things we ACTUALLY NEED.

Lars has calculated that we could have - instead:

2.5 billion: 250 km of high-class bicycle infrastructure along all S-Train lines, the east coast route and the Helsingør motorway all the way to Trørød

1 billion: 330 km of bicycle superhighways

13 billion: Converting the A-bus network to 65 km of tramways

3 billion: Fully automated S-Train system with trains every 5 minutes on all the lines with stops at all stations.

3 billion: Extra train tunnel between Central Station and Østerport (automated trains require more capacity)

0,25 billion: Train line from Dragør – Kastrup

0,25 billion: New trains on the East Coast route, re-branded as S-Train system

1 billion: New green spaces in the city and parks

3 billion: New sports facilities and activity spaces

What city would you rather live in? One that builds last-century Soviet style tunnels or one that provides you with the list, above? Or rather... which politicians would you vote for here in 2012? Tunnel rats or visionaries?

Welcome to the New Copenhagen.

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