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Comment by dillondoyle | Hacker News Reader

How much time does this actually save? Just looking at the crude map it doesn't like like a huge amount? Like slightly more than cutting a rectangle into a hypotenuse (idk the term, like cut into triangle, the new long edge, still shorter than the other two combined)

VERY cool though

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The new train line is going to be 160km shorter while also allowing higher speeds. Trains between Hamburg and Copenhagen are projected to take less than 2:30h, down from 4:40h today.

That's pretty good. Especially if it saves energy on trains. but the cost is HUGE for 2 hours.

It's 2 hours times the number of passages through the tunnel. Hint: there will be more than a single passage.

Jokes aside, there are sometimes rail projects where millions are spent to save 2 minutes. Or even just tens of seconds. Over the lifetime of the infrastructure it is still worth it, especially when combining multiple projects.

2 hours savings is huge. You won't find many infra projects with those kind of time savings.

It is a cost that will probably amortize itself easily over the decades it will be in service.

Train from Copenhagen to Hamburg goes from 4.5 to 2.5 hours. As a Swede, this makes vacations to the continent via car or train much more attractive.

That sounds really nice! I wish we had train network in the US. Though I get the country is huge but so is Europe from tip to tip.

You do. It's just not used for PAX, besides a few exceptions. Look for Class 1 Railroad on Wikipedia, and compare freight to passenger trackage.

> Like slightly more than cutting a rectangle into a hypotenuse (idk the term, like cut into triangle, the new long edge, still shorter than the other two combined)

Diagonal. The word you were looking for is diagonal. :-)

There is a Rødby-Puttgarten ferry route. The ferry takes 45 minutes. In the daytime there are two departures/hour in each direction. On busy days you need a reservation.

The ferry cost about three times as much as the fee for the Great Belt bridge to Fyn, so people use the ferry because they still save a couple of hours, depending on traffic.

So the bridge will make a huge difference.

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