Stop all planning for a new railway tunnel under Oslo

Left-wing leader Guri Melby shakes his head at Sp, who is now investing heavily in Oslo. Sp wants to completely stop the works of a new railway tunnel under the capital.

The Center Party will plan 150 million for the planning of a new tunnel under Oslo. Under the plan, it will help double train service in the capital.

“Stop tunnel planning” is a clearly visible point in Sp’s alternative state budget for 2021.

– With today’s huge cost overruns on rail projects, we must be cautious. We must use the capacity that already exists, rather than continue with a very long and complicated project, says Siv Mossleth.

He is on the transport committee of the Storting for Sp.

Now he receives a strong reaction from the leader of the Liberal Party and Minister of Education, Guri Melby.

– They use a symbolic cut to torpedo one of the most important measures to improve train service throughout the country. This may mean that the entire project organization for a new tunnel must end, says Melby.

– The new railway tunnel in Oslo is one of the most important steps we can take to provide passengers with better train service. I think everyone who has been frozen on a cold platform early one morning, because the train is late, will agree that we need more investment in railways, not less, says Melby.

She notes that Sp is currently investing heavily in Oslo. But he is still not surprised by the cuts in projects that are important to Oslo.

– But capacity through the Oslo tunnel is just as important for the trains running through Sørlandsbanen and Bergensbanen as it is for passenger traffic in eastern Norway. Poor capacity during Oslo is like a heart attack, it affects the whole body, says Melby.

Q: The offer can be doubled without a new tunnel

Siv Mossleth is responsible for the Center Party. He is on the Storting’s transport committee. It states that the National Theater station must close for two years if a new tunnel is built.

– I myself am a diligent user of the station. Many will miss it if it has to shut down for that long, he says.

According to Mossleth, the train service around Oslo can be doubled without building the rail tunnel. It does so on the basis of a Traffic Concept report that Sp, Ap and SV at the Storting commissioned this spring. In July, the three parties presented the report together, in Aftenposten.

– The crown crisis also shows that people can work from home. Perhaps it will be more common not to commute to work during peak hours every day in the future? she asks.

Sp will also postpone construction of the E18 Lysaker-Ramstadsletta, accelerate the project with a ship tunnel at Stad and invest more in ports, such as Andenes and Borg in Fredrikstad.

This is how other parties react

Aps Sverre Myrli responds with a resounding no to whether the party will follow Sp.

– Absolutely not, says Myrli, who this summer helped make the report referred to by Sp.

Like SP, Frp will slash rail allocations, by 600 million by 2021.

But the money will not be taken from planning a new tunnel, says the party’s Bård Hoksrud.

– The tunnel is crucial to the progress of the entire Intercity development. Since 2013, there are more than 100 more exits in the tunnel. The capacity has exploded. Sp’s proposal destroys the possibility of realizing the purpose of Intercity’s full development, says Hoksrud.

No, says Bane Nor

– We have shown that with automatic train control, traffic can be increased by 20 percent through the current tunnel. Doubling the train traffic around Oslo without a new train tunnel, on the other hand, is more than ambitious.

This is what communications director Torhild Uribarri says at Bane Nor.

– Trains turning in Oslo S or on the west side of Oslo will require longer stops than traffic going through the tunnel, he says.