Citybanan

Citybanan (Swedish: roughly "the City Line") is a railway tunnel beneath central Stockholm in Sweden that is currently under construction, which will be used by the Stockholm commuter rail network. The project was proposed by the national railways, Statens Järnvägar in 1988 and has, after initially being disregarded as too expensive, been seriously considered since 2002. In 2006, the national railway management authority Banverket agreed with the City and County Council on the financing of the project, and the last step in the planning process was scheduled for 2006-2007. The cost of the tunnel and stations is estimated to 16.3 billion SEK.

The new Alliance government in Sweden, after the general elections of 2006, did however put the project in question. Representatives of the government announced on October 1 of that year that they were scrapping Citybanan in favor of building a third railway track through the city. In December 2006, however, the government's appointed expert, after a renewed assessment of the project, recommended building the tunnel. In May 2007 the government finally decided to build the tunnel. Ground works and the construction of work tunnels has begun.

The tunnel is planned with a length of convert|6|km|mi, with two rail tracks and two new underground stations: "City", beneath the current Stockholm Metro station T-Centralen; and "Odenplan", at Odenplan next to the metro station there. Trains are planned to begin using the new line in 2017.

The tunnel will significantly improve the traffic throughput to and from south of Stockholm as there are only two tracks in that direction from Stockholm Central Station, the same number that were in place in 1871 when the railway was originally built. This place is nicknamed "the wasp waist". It has 24 scheduled trains per hour in each direction, a density that otherwise only exists in metro networks. The commuter trains pass Stockholm with up to 16 trains per hour per direction. The other eight are regional and long-distance trains.

Placing the commuter rail traffic into a tunnel of its own will thus allow increased capacity for other national rail traffic through Central Station. The entire system for long-distance passenger railways in Sweden suffers from this bottleneck, since so many trains go to or through Stockholm. As a result, there is no room to increase the frequency of commuter, regional, and long-distance trains despite their heavy usage.

Seen from south to north, the route of the Citybanan tunnel fork off the Sammanbindningsbanan after Stockholms södra station on Södermalm, continue beneath the bay bottom of Riddarfjärden at Söderström, beneath the islet of Riddarholmen, beneath Riddarfjärden at Norrström, to the new "City" station. From there, it will continue beneath Norrmalm to "Odenplan" station, then beneath Vasastaden to join with the Norra stambanan at Tomteboda.

Coordinates:
*Southern tunnel entrance: coord|59.315052|18.067773|display=inline
*Northern tunnel entrance: coord|59.349252|18.019209|display=inline

External links

* [http://www.banverket.se/sv/Amnen/Aktuella-projekt/Projekt/1867/Citybanan-i-Stockholm.aspx Banverket – Citybanan i Stockholm] sv icon
* [http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1298&a=542245 Dagens Nyheter – Citybanan börjar byggas i sommar] sv icon