Stockholm City Line

Citybanan tunnel under Stockholm

The new tunnel will divert Stockholm's commuter traffic from the busy main line through the city.

The Stockholm City Line (Swedish: Citybanan) is a metro railway tunnel under construction beneath central Stockholm in Sweden which will be used by the Stockholm Commuter Rail. The line will be 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) long, double track and electrified. It will have two stations: Stockholm City Station will be located directly below T-Centralen, the central station of the Stockholm Metro. The Odenplan station will be the other station, and will be located next to the Odenplan metro station. The line is scheduled to enter service in 2017.

Route

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. It has 24 scheduled trains per hour in each direction. The commuter trains pass Stockholm with up to 16 trains per hour per direction. The other eight are regional and long-distance trains. The tunnel will take all commuter trains, allowing more regional and intercity trains to operate along the old line.

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 80% of train rides in Sweden start or stop in Stockholm [1]. 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 will branch off the Connection Line after Stockholm South Station station on Södermalm, and 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 East Coast Line at Tomteboda.

History

Citybanan in March 2009. The sign reads, "We're building a tunnel under Söderström [the southern channel around Gamla stan] as part of the Stockholm City Line."

The project was proposed by the Swedish State Railways in 1988 and, after initially being disregarded as too expensive, has been seriously considered since 2002. In 2006, the Swedish Rail Administration agreed with the city and Storstockholms Lokaltrafik 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 at 16.3 billion Swedish kronor.

After the general elections of 2006, the new Alliance government called the project into 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, recommended building the tunnel following a renewed assessment of the project. In May 2007 the government finally decided to build the tunnel. In September 2014 the tunnel reached its full length.

Coordinates:

• Southern tunnel entrance:
• Northern tunnel entrance:

External links

• Swedish Transport Administration - The Stockholm City Line
• Dagens Nyheter – Citybanan börjar byggas i sommar (Swedish)