Swedish railways suffer from limited capacity and maintenance lagging behind. There are negotiations regarding some future high speed rail lines, that would connect the biggest population centres in Sweden in the future (Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö/København). The speed is planned to be 320 km/h.
There is some debate whether the project is a good idea, and I'll discuss my opinion in two blog posts. As a Malmö resident, I'll focus on the line between Malmö and Stockholm.
Let's start with demography and geography.
I'll compare the proposed line with some existing lines with respect to length, number of stops and population near the stations. I'll use an online tool to calculate the population in a 10 km radius and in a 25 km radius from the station.
The proposed line between Malmö and Stockholm (high speed between Lund and Järna) will be 550 km (approximately 500 km high speed rail). There will be nine stops between Malmö and Stockholm and the time will be 2½h according to Europakorridoren.
Excluding København (60 km from Lund), the total population of all towns served by the line will be 1.6 M/ 3 M. Including København, the population of all towns will be 2.5 M/ 4.5 M. Some of the smaller stations include Tranås and Vagnhärad with populations of 10 to 20 thousand people.
A future blog post will compare the Swedish project with some existing European high speed lines with similar speeds.
No comments:
Post a Comment