Västlänken

Västlänken ( _en. the West link) is a planned railway tunnel under central Gothenburg. The purpose of the project is to increase capacity and reduce travel times on the Gothenburg network by changing the Gothenburg Central Station from a terminus to an underground transit station. Two new underground transit stations, Haga and Korsvägen, will also be built.

History

Of the close to 900,000 people who live in Greater Gothenburg almost 400,000 people live outside the Gothenburg urban area. Approximately 250,000 people in the region commute to or from Gothenburg Municipality. The majority of these people use cars for transportation and the roads in the region are overloaded. Better rail communications to different parts of Gothenburg and better transitions to light rail would improve the situation.

Planning process

The planning process has elapsed during a long period of time, being included in preliminary city plans in the mid 90s under the project name "Centrumtunneln".

A feasibility study was conducted in 2001–2002 by Banverket in cooperation with Västra Götalandsregionen, Västtrafik, Göteborgsregionen, and Göteborgs stad.

Västlänken is not part of Banverket's Framtidsplan (en: Future plan) 2004–2015, nor the alternative plan.

Routes

Banverket investigated three routes for Västlänken, including new stations along the routes in the city centre. The route alternatives were named after the proposed new stations; Haga–Korsvägen, Haga–Chalmers, and Korsvägen. In addition to these underground alternatives, an expansion of the current rail network to the south, with a larger termius station was investigated, named Förstärkningsalternativet ( _en. the reinforcement alternative).

Decision

On December 19, 2007, Banverket chose the Haga-Korsvägen alternative as it best fulfilled the goals for the expansion. A majority of other governmental bodies to which the proposed routes were referred for consideration also agreed on that opinion.

Construction

The construction cost for the project is estimated to SEK 14,5 billion, by price index of January 1, 2007.

See also

*City Tunnel, Malmö
*Citybanan, Stockholm