Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway | Hacker News Reader

Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

reasonstobecheerful.world

276 pointsimartin2k241 comments

Bergen municipality released a 25 minute video[0] of the bike ride through the tunnel and into the downtown area of Bergen.

If 'sakte TV' or slow TV is something you like, I could also recommend checking out The Bergen Line minute by minute[1], which is a seven hour broadcast of the train going between Bergen and Oslo. A peaceful and beautiful train ride.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42q15E2YE8Y [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udF0IXB2FZA

holy cow this is a beautiful tunnel

Imagine if there was a cycling culture like this in the South. Places like Chattanooga with skinny cyclists all over the place.

> ... in the South.

Well, most of Europe is south of Norway, and there's a lot of comparable cycling culture and facilities there.

Unless you mean south of the equator, like here in Australia, but unfortunately we're not so good with that. I can't speak to much of the rest of the south (of the equator) unfortunately.

I suspect he means the southern parts of the US.

(Which are the most car oriented states, IIRC)

I meant the USA

As someone that has enjoyed Minneapolis St Pauls heavily interconnected bike path system, and then goes to uber-car-centric southern areas (not even shoulders on the roads to support bikes), it blows my mind, especially some place like Houston.

You don't even have "real winter"! It is far easier on a bike dealing with rain than dealing with six inches of snow and packed ice. Four seasons of bike trips! Don't they know what they are missing?

And with e-bikes and the like, you don't even need to worry about getting sweaty in the 100 degree heat. Instead it is an awesome breezy trip.

Houston for example has the beginnings of this: a big path down some stream/water transport that splits down the middle of the city (Macgregor or something like it. A built in ebike crosscity-thoroughfare, you just need to urban plan some extension bike lanes and boom the city is 10x more bikeable.

But Houston is, for example, forbidden by the Texas legislature from funding any mass transportation, because the Texas GOP is ... insane. Well, everything in Texas is insane.

A great channel with tons of the Bergen-Oslo train route is RailCowGirl. https://www.youtube.com/@RailCowGirl

Other large cycling tunnels:

- Rotterdam's Maas Tunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6UUinjhQgM

- Antwerp's Kennedytunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7CsUnQ5BY0

- Paris' Parc des Rives de Seine's tunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAIXHVolUmg

- England's Tyne Tunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR4je-ndz7E

- Nam Han River's tunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFNrxpeLtAU

- Lyon's Tunnel de la Croix-Rousse, with yours truly pedalling through it: https://youtu.be/JDvBNsVMkRc?list=PLBcwv3gb0JkpDlYfh-yfBWqtS...

Also the Innocent Railway tunnel in Edinburgh - not that long but with an interesting history (a railway tunnel that predates steam):

https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2021/02/innocent-railw...

Snoqualmie Tunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7Hze1R8Gg8 (more of a hiking trail, but you can bike it if you have lights). Not purpose-built; it's an old train tunnel.

Is there any reason why the tunnel is curved instead of straight? It's probably cheaper if it were straight (less rock to dig), so there must be a reason for the curve.

The best thing about pedestrian/cycling bridges and tunnels is that they cost soooo much less money to build since they have so much laxer requirements.

The reason why we still have roman bridges standing is because the stress contribution of a human walking on it is basically zero. But start bringing in cars and trucks and see it crumble in a week

I believe that road wear is proportional to mass ^ 4

This is true. Road damage scales with the _fourth_ power of axle load.

Pedestrian and bike infra for majority of cases in dense areas is objectively better in all metrics except human laziness and entitlement

Eh, not exactly.

Pedestrians are heavier than cars in terms of pounds per square foot.

Bridges are designed for extreme loads, including pessimistic pattern loading, and the requirements for pedestrian bridges aren’t any less safety critical.

(edit: I designed this bridge: https://www.google.com/maps/@47.597616,-122.3297804,3a,75y,7...)

Yeah, the potential loading is annoying. I remember wondering why predestrian/cycle bridges were always so annoyingly narrow despite having low loads. The issue is of course that they have to be strong enough to support being crammed with hundreds of people when everyone is there to watch the local fireworks/rowing race/anything else that's happening, even if that happens almost never.

If you built a rope-bridge, I'm sure people would beware of cramming it. Maybe it's possible to build designs that discourage.

Where are you from? I haven't seen an "annoyingly narrow" ped/cycle bridge in Sweden or Belgium.

>If you built a rope-bridge, I'm sure people would beware of cramming it.

You're not American or British, ehe? ;)

Or many other countries, I've seen enough video of bridge collapses to know that if people CAN cram on it, at some point they WILL cram on it.

> “Where are you from? I haven't seen an "annoyingly narrow" ped/cycle bridge in Sweden or Belgium.”

I’d say most of London’s busy pedestrian/cycle bridges and tunnels are annoyingly narrow.

Even taking cyclists out of the equation, they can get congested at times, particularly with tourists stopping to take photos from the middle etc.

So a cyclist can either be polite and move at pedestrian speed, which is annoying for the cyclist. Or weave and dodge pedestrians at speed (typically Deliveroo/UberEats riders on e-bikes) which is annoying and dangerous for pedestrians…

See also this story about the Golden Gate: https://www.sfgate.com/local-donotuse/article/golden-gate-br...

Love this quote: Friday marked the 32nd anniversary of the walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, an event The Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub once referred to as "the largest clusterf— in Bay Area history where no one actually died."

> "There were cheers as some people started to hurl bicycles over the railing," he wrote. "A stroller tumbled down and sank beneath the waves 220 feet below. 'Throw the baby, too,' people yelled, laughing.

I admit that I chuckled at this.

This is interesting! But how does a dense crowd of people compare to a queue of lorries carrying cement or building materials in terms of mass per square metre?

Let's try to find some data ... ... ... A fully loaded Hanson cement lorry seems to be 32 tonnes / 2.55 m / 9.15 m, which is about 1.4 tonnes per square metre. That corresponds to 20 x 70 kg people per square metre, which would be a disaster whether or not the floor gives way, unless it's a very special kind of crowd (acrobats or something).

Lots of roads and bridges have a limit on axle load permitted on them. You can't do that with pedestrian bridges.

there's more to it than just pounds per square foot. speed over the bridge matters too, which is why you get speed restrictions on some bridges

If these early '00 bridge builder games have taught me anything, you want to go as fast as possible, as you might reach the other side as the bridge is still in the process of collapsing ;)

Ok I'm clearly talking to an expert here but isn't there a factor of vibration from vehicle traffic to take into account? And sure humans if packed into a bridge might be heavier than cars per square foot, but they're usually not packed like sardines on a bridge.

Famous example of pedestrian bridge resonances: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge,_London#Re...

Sure but again, just like packing people onto a bridge like sardines, it's an unusual circumstance. While vehicles driving all day over a bridge is not unusual. And even vehicles getting stuck on a bridge due to some traffic issue is not unusual either.

One has to consider what is daily use, not just the exceptional cases.

> One has to consider what is daily use, not just the exceptional cases.

generally it's the exceptional case that it's designed around though

I'm not sure I understand that comment. "Well, yeah, the bridge collapsed but it was an exceptional case. It worked fine for typical daily use."

Here is how I understand the comment:

We have a car bridge designed to withstand exceptional load, and a pedestrian bridge designed to withstand exceptional load. The commenter assumes that on average, the car bridge's load is much closer to it's maximum load than the pedestrian bridge's load, and in consequence, the average wear on the car bridge should be higher than on the pedestrian bridge. As such, the pedestrian bridge should have a much longer lifetime, and the commenter assumes that this is the reason old Roman bridges are still standing.

Their question is: is this assumption correct?

Sounds good to me, ship it.

It probably is not correct, because the pedestrian bridge max load is probably something like "what if an idiot drove a car down it" whereas the car bridge max load is "what if it was full of very heavy trucks and one burst into flame".

You also have to take failure modes into account, and how degraded the bridge can get before it's "unsafe".

Somewhat. There are a bunch of 'failure' modes that you want to avoid (either actual failure or service level issues), and some bridges are going to be closer to one mode than another.

It's a little like memory pressure vs cpu vs disk vs network. There are some services that aren't going to ever hit one of them because the others are limiting first. Memcached is never going saturate disk.

If you've got a bridge that's 'stiff' or 'heavy' (like truss/beam/whatever) resonances are unlikely to be an issue. If you've got anything light and flexible or with cables, you need to be thinking _hard_ about resonance, in all the modes, torsional being one that's bitten designers bad in the past.

> Bridges are designed for extreme loads, including pessimistic pattern loading, and the requirements for pedestrian bridges aren’t any less safety critical.

In terms of maximum load you are right, but wear and tear is completely different.

Trucks are terrible, pedestrians and bikes have zero impact.

> Trucks are terrible, pedestrians and bikes have zero impact.

Truck loading is very large, but pedestrians do have a non-zero impact - look at the solid marble steps of ancient buildings, for example.

I think though that the pedestrian wear is only on the roadway surface, rather than structural wear from, say, trucks vibrating enough to crack the bridge or throw off bits of concrete.

That's some pointless nitpicking. Ok, humans have near-zero impact to the point of needing double-digit decades to erode a surface. Happy now?

Citation needed. What about the type of concrete used, especially the limited lifetime of reinforced concrete?

"because the stress contribution of a human walking on it is basically zero."

If that would be the case, armys would still march on bridges. But they don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broughton_Suspension_Bridge

So instead of marching they need to be walking.

Tell that to the engineers of the Millennium Bridge in London. Resonance from foot traffic caused it to start swaying, requiring shoring up with massive dampers.

No matter the traffic, a bridge should always be built to avoid resonance. Unstable dynamical systems do not care if it's a truck or a feather, they'll resonate and collapse.

Not sure about structurally but in terms of ventilation I think this is right

>But start bringing in cars and trucks and see it crumble in a week

There are some Roman bridges that still get automobile traffic (Römerbrücke, Puente Alcántara) or were only recently pedestrianized (Puente Romano). There are more probably, that's just what I found after skimming some Wikipedia pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_bridge

It's the escape tunnel for a tram tunnel with an extra coat of paint: https://www.lifeinnorway.net/bergen-cycle-tunnel/

> It will cost an additional NOK 500 million to upgrade the tunnel from an emergency service to one that can be used daily.

$46M USD, to save cyclists 5.5km/20 minutes; that seems like a pretty good return.

Indeed, if we assume cyclists use the tunnel 100 days a year going both ways through it, thats saving each one nearly 60+ hours a year. If each one's time is worth $20, that is over a thousand dollars per cyclist per year - it only takes 9k cyclists to make the savings outweigh the costs in five years.

And assuming that this will increase the number of people who choose to bike instead of to drive, you can also add savings for all the remaining drivers who get a slightly easier commute.

And net reduced road maintenance and external costs coming for reduced car usage

And a healthier society (on the whole) as people are encouraged to cycle. Less diabetes, etc.

And a happier society as it's far more fun to cycle than to drive in traffic

Why only 100d/y while Norwegian works around 190d/y? In my experience people tends to have a “main” commute mode that they only turn away from in exceptional cases. Easier to live with habits that mixing your timetables every other day.

People might use cars or public transport instead of a bike to commute if there is heavy rain or snow. This is an important consideration in Bergen which is notoriously the rainiest city in Europe (it rains more than half the time).

So there are places in Europe where it rains more than in UK?

Yes. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Albania.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

That's averages over the whole countries though - the north and west of the UK (particularly the Scottish Highlands and the Lake District) are a lot wetter than the south-east where London is.

Also, "volume of rain" might be misleading because it doesn't give you a feeling for how often it rains. The Highlands in particular can have a light rain that falls for weeks at a time (or at least seems like it if you are in a tent).

Most of the Bay Area gets about the same amount of rain as London. The key difference is that in Cupertino/Los Gators/Palo Alto it rains less often but with more intensity.

Welcome to western Norway. Bring a raincoat!

Not just a raincoat, I've had snow, sunny summer, storm gusts, hail and rain on the same day just this week, I'm int he SW though not entirely west.

I remember one time a few years back when I lived in Stavanger, I went to the post office in the city center there in a bright nice summer day and came out to torrential rain and rivers in the street!

I'm in Stavanger as well. The weather is pretty interesting here.

yes: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/average-annu...

Bergen is one such place funnily enough.

Luckily it doesn't rain (or snow) inside of tunnels.

Plus the health benefits of cycling and the ones of not being involved in driving accidents.

Plus the saving in car TCO and fuel, plus less road maintenance.

Let's assume the saving of one life....

Okay. Taking the 20min saved per ride from the article, and 300 rides that would otherwise take the longer route per day out of my ass, we get 100 hours saved per day. That's approximately 4 days saved per day.

From https://www.fhi.no/en/op/hin/population/life-expectancy/, life expectancy in Norway is about 82 years.

Together, that means the tunnel will save one human life in about 20 years, not taking into account pedestrians, or indeed realistic usage numbers.

300 users a day sounds improbably low for an urban route.

> $46M USD, to save cyclists 5.5km/20 minutes; that seems like a pretty good return.

That obviously depends on a lot of parameters, not least how many cyclists are impacted and how often.

And avoid 20 minutes of getting soaked in Bergen, also a plus.

One of the factors other replies haven't considered is that Norway routinely spends a lot on transport infrastructure, with cost-benefit just one of the factors. This project was relatively cheap compared to the constant building of tunnels for cars that happens across the country. A typical project costs many times more than this.

Per capita Norway is one of the highest spenders in the world, due to the size and low population density of the country. Even with all this spending, transport in some places, especially the north, is slow & inefficient. This has resulted in a high number of airports and Norwegians flying more than almost every other nationality.

Smart move!

Strange, I have never heard of a separate escape tunnel for a tram tunnel. Even German U-Bahn/S-Bahn (which I am most familiar with) tunnels usually just have a walkway beside the tracks that leads to the next station or emergency exit. But I guess that also depends on length between possible stations/exits, or it's due to newer regulations, or maybe it was a "mixed calculation" ("if we build a separate tunnel, it's more expensive, but it can also be used as a bike/pedestrian tunnel").

Subway tunnels usually aren't that far from the surface, even those that dive/rise between stops. So they just dot in a few emergency stairs to the surface if stops are too far apart. This tram tunnel however apparently is a shortcut through some mountain (because otherwise, the bike sibling wouldn't make much difference), so the emergency exit problem isn't easily solved by digging vertically.

The problem here is similar to underwater tunnels. Making an emergency exit straight up is not possible or too expensive.

In this case it is too expensive/unpractical as you would have to dig several hundred meters up a mountain. Also a tunnel going sideways is easier for those who can not walk. And this long stairs up could be a problem even to those who can walk.

For those who don’t know the tunnels goes through a 477m high mountain/hill and both ends are roughly at sea level.

It depends on the length of the tunnel, the traffic in the tunnel, and various other requirements.

Older tunnels the "walk away from the dead train" option was heavily used; but more often now they try to deal with "get away from the horribly burning dead train that will suffocate everyone".

The tram line in Bergen was discontinued in 1965. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_Tramway

-This would be an escape tunnel for the Bybanen, a light railway more comparable to the S-Bahn than a tram as such.

Rotherhithe tunnel in London screams to be repurposed this way -- to become "colorfully lit, art-lined" thing where psychologists give input on how to make it more welcoming

Yeah, London needs more pedestrian/cycle options to cross the Thames - it’s a huge barrier in some areas.

For example, a tunnel (or bridge!) between Canary Wharf and the Rotherhithe peninsula, replacing the existing passenger ferry, would have huge economic benefits by encouraging development of a relatively under-developed area.

The Greenwich foot tunnel is a great asset, and despite not being very cycle-friendly is very popular with cyclists too.

To cross the river in East London you have 2 options: the Greenwich foot tunnel, or the Woolwich one.

Indeed they're great assets but it's incredibly awful when the lifts are broken - and it happens frequently.

Either of them are a huge diversion depending on where you're going as well. If there was a cycle-friendly crossing around where Blackwall tunnel is, I reckon my rides to The Reach would be cut by nearly half.

How busy is the river traffic in East London? If it's not incredibly busy you'd think some sort of movable bridge would be doable.

A permanent structure has to go down really far, or up really far, neither of which is that desirable for walking/bikes.

It's fairly busy but mostly with river ferries, barges, recreational boats, etc which aren't too tall and can fit under most bridges. Taking the Tower Bridge example, vessels up to 9 metres tall can fit under it. If you're taller than that, the bridge must be raised on request[1]. I'd imagine that would be the minimum requirement for any bridge built east of Tower Bridge. Currently the only bridge over the Thames east of Tower Bridge is the Dartford Crossing, which has a 61 meter high deck.

[1] By law, river traffic takes priority over road traffic, but it's raised pretty infrequently now days.

I'd be very very surprised if this became reality. There's no political force to make actual improvements in London, or in the UK as a whole.

>There's no political force to make actual improvements in London, or in the UK as a whole.

"The Youth", so rather tend to make things as colourful - sadly, as colourful they may be illegal.

*Banksy excepted.

The problem is tories and their voters, not disenfranchised youth. Disenfranchised youth is but a symptom

> There's no political force to make actual improvements in London, or in the UK as a whole.

HS2 was an attempt at an infrastructure project for the long term greater good but quickly devolved into nothing but bad news cycles.

Everyone is too busy flinging shit and whipping out soundbites to actually do anything, in part because anything worthwhile is hard and mistakes are more punishing than not trying?

It all just feels so inevitable and I don't understand what stops other countries getting into the same spiral of short termism

> HS2 was an attempt at an infrastructure project for the long term greater good [..]

Simon Jenkins' 2016 article entitled "HS2: the zombie train that refuses to die"[0], is worth reading:

"HS2 was always a project born of political vanity. Like several other unstoppable megaprojects, it was not rooted in commercial reality or value for money – and it has therefore not been halted by accusations that it is not needed and not worth the cost"

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/07/hs2-the-zomb...

One of the British national pastimes is to complain about the state of the railways and then to complain about infrastructure investments in the railways (whic, granted, often turn into an omnishamble).

My take-away from HS2 is that the UK is not able to build a relatively short high-speed railway. HS2 (so just London to Birmingham) is 134 miles/215 km long, that's nothing and yet...

HS2 is somehow insanely expensive and slow moving compared to France. We just need to go and look at how they do it. The two countries are very close in terms of GDP income and regulatory burden. We seem to be very inefficient in comparison.

> HS2 is somehow insanely expensive and slow moving compared to France. We just need to go and look at how they do it. The two countries are very close in terms of GDP income and regulatory burden

They aren't anywhere close to each other in population density.

>where psychologists give input on how to make it more welcoming

I'm sure the psychology field is full of pseudo-scientific, un-replicable research into what makes something "welcoming"!

Same as the economics field no? If more than 2/3 find it 'welcoming' than I'd count that as win. Hopefully the taxpayers didn't get charged an arm and leg.

The most dangerous thing about psychology is not just being full of un-replicable reseach but being forced by governments as a source of common sense with "doctors" licensed as a real doctors. So I feel that minuses in your karma.

Designers can do anything more welcoming by use some special colors and shapes though.

I'm jealous. If my country built a tunnel like that, it would be for cars only (preferably old polluting diesel, with fuel subsidies), so that "normal people" can use it. With an added whiff of coal power plant smoke.

Oh well. Growing civilized takes time.

There is crazy entitlement of cars to the detriment of everything else. It's like privilidge/something-ism.

In Uk there is a particular crossing where cars were frqeuently hitting pedestris on the pavement, and traffic authority decided againt putting up bollards becauae cars might get damaged.

So its more important to keep a car undamaged than to keep people/children safe.

We've had people cut up bollards with an angle grinder. Bollards in the shape of a large planter was soaked in petrol and burned to the ground

Nobody cares, noone is charged and this does not even make the news.

Sounds a lot like Central or Eastern Europe. I'm optimistic and believe that in about 10 to 15 years you will have caught up with Western European pedestrian and cycle infrastructure. You might even surpass them due to first-mover disadvantage.

One of the articles linked at the bottom of the article includes a video:

https://www.bicycling.com/news/a43249948/longest-cycle-tunne...

And the CNN article linked at the bottom has more pictures:

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-longest-cyclin...

And, of course, there is a car parked in the bike lane blocking the entrance to the tunnel (very start of the video).

To be fair this video was recorded before the tunnel officially opened.

In Amsterdam a bridge over the water connecting Central Amsterdam with the North is always a hot topic, for decades of talking about it sill hasn't materialized.

A few serious alternatives that were proposed where tunnels for bikes. But they consistently decide not to do it because of safety concerns at night.

Which is hopefully a bigger issue in Amsterdam than Bergen.

I wonder how the cost of one policeman posted there every night for 50 years compares to continuing to run 24/7 ferries. Specially dilluted on top of the cost of building the tunnel itself.

In suppose it's not a question of money, but the lack people willing to take such a position. It's not a glamorous job and most have better things to do with their time.

CCTVs for a long bridge/tunnel might be enough. As it would take quite a while to leave they do not seem like an ideal mugging place?

Drunk people, homeless shelters. It's a choatic area in Amsterdam, will attract lots of things and certain people don't care about CCTV, hoodie is enough to cover up. Police is always understaffed in nights of a weekend so they just don't really look forward to a new hotspot they need to go and check up on. Just happened last week that a friend jumped in between a 16 year old boy being beaten up, the police eventually came but left quickly and didn't want to call an ambulance because of lack of resources, he had to go to the ER himself. Turns out it was so bad he needed surgery the next day.

Would you take that job for 50k/year? I wouldn't. Would you take it for 500k/year? I would. So, it is a question of money at the end of the day.

Not in any realistic scenario, no.

The ferry needs at least 2 people on it, right?

In Rotterdam they close the Maastunnel to cyclists and pedestrians at night. There are also people stationed in it during the day at either end. I don't see why Amsterdam couldn't do the same.

A tunnel that you can't use at night makes it significant less useful. I really enjoy returning home by bike at night when public transport has stopped or is running on significantly reduced capacity.

I wouldn't say significant. The vast majority of cyclists will use it mainly (or only) to travel to and from offices/schools/universities/shops. A tunnel that's closed at night will still be really useful. Especially if the alternative is not having a tunnel due to safety concerns.

if you are going to invest 100's of millions probably better to do it right. Current idea is a bridge far away from the central station which is even more silly.

It depends on what you mean by “right”. Just because it would be “better” to have a tunnel you could use at night versus a day only one doesn’t mean a day only one wouldn’t be better than the current situation. If a day only tunnel would save money in the long term (due to replacing ferries), take pressure off of other modes of transport, and increase revenue due to induced demand allowing people who may have otherwise not traveled into out or out of the city center on a given day choosing to because of the tunnel option, then it makes sense. Not building it until you could “figure out” how to keep it open at night sounds like a “perfect being the enemy of good” situation. If 50,000 people per day would use the tunnel, not building it because 2,500 people per night couldn’t use it isn’t a good solution.

The tunnel in Bergen is also closed at night.

I saw something in the news today that the gemeente has earmarked €100m for the bridge, 1/3rd of the total (another 100m coming from another source, and the remaining to be raised.) Bike tunnels under the IJ apparently (so I recall reading, anyway) also have the issue that to have not too steep slopes at the end, the entry/exit points will have to be a reasonable distance from the water itself.

https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/28/amsterdam-pushing-eu100-millio...

Yeah the steepness is also a problem, few designs proposed had a spiral down from the station, looked pretty cool. Others had a sort of bike lift, and indeed others made it start between Dam square and Central station.

Btw bridge also deal with steepness issues, since they have to be pretty high, and in most cases also have to be able to open.

Haha but yeah they always have some sort of plan. Not long ago, maybe 5 years ago, a bicycle bridge was pretty close, I created the site where the people living could vote on different options of the bridge, but they also needed approvement from the national governemnt because it affects the water way and they didn't approve: https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/207386/javabrug-definitief-van-...

It wasn't the best plan anyway, was too far from CS close to Pakhuis de Zwager.

But the new plan is even more ridiculous, they want to create it at Azartplein now.

But keeps happening. Too many stakeholders, and lack of urgency.

Other links for those reading Dutch

https://archive.is/p4UJA

https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/220208/amsterdam-zet-miljoenen-...

Some people probably think the city look worse because of them but there are some really nice cycling+pedestrian bridges in Copenhagen.

There's also the very poorly designed Inderhavnsbro bridge. It looks nice enough, but they just made some dumb choices in how they've laid it out.

https://www.archdaily.com/868904/copenhagens-latest-piece-of...

Ah yes I remember being surprised at those chicanes that are so prone to issues between cyclists and pedestrians. I took it in not too busy times/days so it was ok in that regards but it must really be annoying during rush hours.

The old bridges are about same size, and prettier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magere_Brug.

However this would be a much larger bridger goes over a much larger river that need to support frequent travel of large boats.

I think pretty is subjective. I am not a fan soulless all modern cities. For example I once went to Almere in the Netherlands and I found it quite depressing.

But on the other hand I like cities which keep very old building and pieces of architectures alongside much more modern ones and I think you can always discuss details but Copenhagen is generally a good example of that. Having said that I have not known Copenhagen in the 1960-1970's so maybe older people would tell me it was much prettier back then.

What sort of civil society groups are there advocating for this kind of infrastructure in Norway?

I’m always curious how people organize to achieve these outcomes. I live in a medium sized city in the US that is badly in need of better cycling infrastructure. There are a few organizations here, but vision is lacking or has been beaten out of them. I’d love to have some sort of organizing / policy toolkit that factors in experience from successful campaigns for systems like this.

The civil society groups and local governments that advocate for this sort of thing exist in the US too.

What Norway doesn't have (and much of Europe) is a powerful auto lobby that has prevented this sort of infrastructure for decades and forced cities to be built in giant suburban sprawls.

In germany, the car industry is way more important and powerful then in the US and it was able to prevent the EU ban on combustion engines, and yet germany has more walkable cities then the US.

I’m well aware those groups. I’m asking about solutions here.

In my experience in the US, every bike trail/walking trail success has been local; a local group in the area that can benefit from it, getting support from businesses and people in the community and working with the local government.

They sell it as an "option" not as "let's ban all cars" which helps people either support or ignore it, instead of being opposed. Often they work for years, talking to the railroads (lots of these are rail conversions, see https://www.railstotrails.org/policy/ ), etc. They work on plans that slowly take shape (for example, widening sidewalks when they're replaced, modifying roads when replaced, etc). After 10 to 20 years, it all starts coming together.

There was also a specific path of development that many cities took in the mid-20th century that make public transit development now very difficult. Carving up downtown areas of cities with Parkways/Expressways/Highways, pushed heavily by influential urban planner Robert Moses in New York State, and copied in many other major US cities, makes it difficult to move from one area of a city to another without a car. The building of massive, unattractive public housing projects, and the hollowing out of urban areas due to redlining and “white flight” to the suburbs, now leave huge swaths of urban cities with decades of underinvestment. And finally, you have the massive suburbs, that take more money to build and maintain than they put back in through taxes, which causes a parasitic drain on the urban centers funds to spend on improved transit that isn’t focused on more car infrastructure to “keep up” with more and more cars streaming in and out from those suburbs.

Only tangentially related, but I'm a bit dissapointed by Google Maps: when searching for this tunnel (and the tram line that it doubles as an escape tunnel for), all the copyright notices are from 2023, but there is no trace of it to be seen. I was expecting to at least see the construction works (these things usually take years to complete), but nothing. And there's also no "transit" layer for Bergen. Gotta do better than that Google if you want to be seen as "eco-friendly", offering fuel-saving driving alternatives doesn't quite cut it... Bing Maps is a bit better, it shows some early to mid stage construction work - it looks like the area of the tunnel mouth has been cleared, and an overpass has been constructed for a road, but no tracks to be seen anywhere yet. And the imagery is lower-res than Google Maps. And no transit layer either...

OpenStreetMap's got you covered: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/677727136

Sure, I was expecting nothing less from OSM's great community - now we just need some legal way to put aerial imagery on OSM :(

We're way off topic now, but well. OSM is insistently not focused on a map, but on the data. On this data a lot of other mapping projects can (and are being) built. In central Europe, we have freemap.sk, which combines OSM data, hi-quality aerial imagery - for Slovakia only, these were shot by the government and are licensed in a way that they can be combined with OSM data - resulting in possibilities such as displaying bike paths over super detailed aerial maps. Also check out mapy.cz, they are based on OSM (outside of Czechia) and in some parts of the world can be switched to satellite/aerial imagery with roads overlayed over it.

Here you go, the Fyllingsdalen side of the construction work. The opening on the right.

https://www.google.com/maps/@60.3477967,5.2923209,3a,75y,120...

Bergen's population is just over 200k. European cities or even large towns have prioritised public transportation and liveable infrastructure like this in a way that only New York really has in the US. I don't think there is a single 200-thousand-person city in the US where you can do a single things without a car.

Do you mean that 200k is a particularly bad size of U.S. city? There are certainly smaller cities that have _some_ accommodation for cyclists, like Davis, California, or Boulder, Colorado.

Some accommodation is nice. It's not enough to not own a car entirely.

It can be in some locations, if you're willing to take the limitations.

Minneapolis has a decent network: https://go.minneapolismn.gov/final-plan/bicycling/all-ages-a... (but of course you have snow half the year).

Cars are very useful, and they even exist in Europe; the reasonable best one ca do is work out a non-car commute and use it less - but it is possible to be entirely car free in many American cities (especially if you're willing to be in a smaller town that you can literally walk across).

I think what you mean to say is that there are few "medium" cities in the US where "techie and richer" people elect to voluntarily live without a car.

You absolutely can live without a car in a lot of these cities but if and only if you want to bike. If you want to ride a lot of public transit it's gonna suck.

What you can't do is do it in a trendy way that "befits your tax bracket" so to speak and prevents the white collar types from looking at you like you're inferior when you bike lock your cargo bike to the lamp post beside the liquor store.

As for bigger cities, you absolutely can live without a car in Boston, DC, SF, Atlanta, Chicago, and the list goes on but toward the bottom it's gonna require more biking and less public transit.

Living without a car in those cities is severely limiting; I tried to do that in two of those and felt it was very difficult to buy groceries and get to work quickly and do easy recreation things on the weekend. It's not even practical to stay out late in many of those cities.

The only city in the US where you can live in most neighbourhoods and not be limited without a car is NY.

And all of those cities you mentioned are significantly larger (600-800k).

>Living without a car in those cities is severely limiting; I tried to do that in two of those and felt it was very difficult to buy groceries and get to work quickly and do easy recreation things on the weekend.

So now we're just splitting subjective standard of living hairs? I think we can all agree that living car free in Manhattan is fine and living car free in nowhere Idaho is not but drawing a line in the middle always just turns into a dumb circle jerk.

>It's not even practical to stay out late in many of those cities.

That's mostly because people who think they know how other people should live don't want the bars open all night and in cases where that's not politically possible to just decree they screw with other things they can effect like public transit schedules.

It's really not that hard of a line to draw. Can you enjoy all of the opportunities of city life without a car? Do most people not own a car? There's one city in the US where those answers are "yes".

Your line of reasoning reeks of Europe worship with a token exception for obfuscation purposes. There are tons and tons of people who live in places like Boston and SF and Chicago without cars and do not feel any worse off for doing so. I used to be one of them. I would go so far as to say these people can enjoy all the opportunities of city life. Are they a majority? Probably not. But that's mostly a figment of how these cities absorbed their urbanized suburbs in the 20th century.

Even Europe isn't car-free; sure, if you're a tourist and you visit Rome you can go all vacation without a car or even setting foot in one, but the people who live and work there often have (or want) a car. And there are things you just can't do in Rome without a car or car-adjacent (Uber, taxi, etc) such as some activity in the suburbs in the morning, cross town in the afternoon, and central in the evening.

It's all about working with what you have available, not dreaming what could be available - would it be nice if there was a train stop half a block from my house that just happened to go exactly where I wanted? Sure! Is that going to happen? Unlikely, unless I change other things in my life to make it so.

Vehicles/cars per capita:

Europe: .56

Japan: .49

USA: .83

Gibraltar: 1.44

NY prioritizes this stuff in a way that’s great for optics but is wasteful, ineffective, and at a snail’s pace in practice. Construction costs for subways, for example, are about $3.5B/mile [1] as of the most recent line built. Corruption is rampant in unions, contracts, and consultants. The unions are nice enough to demand positions like break room supervisor or elevator operator (to press buttons in an elevator), to other workers that no auditor or construction professional could figure out why they were at the work site, as mentioned in the below article. Not to mention a MWBE program that dictates how government funds are spent based on race and gender, which inflates construction costs further.

Bike lanes and other non-car infrastructure? Good luck using them. Between police and other supposed city workers parking wherever they want with (often fake) placards to mopeds and ebikes going 20+ mph in the wrong direction, biking and walking in NYC is simply not the enjoyable experience it ought to be. Traffic enforcement might as well not exist - anyone can drive around with a paper plate from Texas or drive however they’d like because NYPD refuses to enforce traffic laws.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

NY built this bike system in about 10 years: https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc-bike-map-2022.... It's pretty impressive and works well.

But yes, the Subway is criminally underfunded (it's ran by the State of NY actually). Nonetheless, despite how bad NY is, it's still the best in the US.

Yep, hence my usage of NY when referring to the MTA. With regard to the bike network in NYC, many of these are vanity projects. Many of the “protected” crosstown bike lanes in Midtown for example, have about 4 feet of room. If someone in a car decides to fling their door open, you don’t have many options to avoid it. Many of the other bike lanes are not usable in substantial parts, such as Schermerhorn St in Brooklyn due to rampant illegal parking. All this is to say that NYC DOT is after a number measured by the number of miles of bike lane, not by cyclist safety. The only “Amsterdam style” bike lane we really, truly have in Manhattan is along the rivers which is way beyond overcrowded on weekends.

Bergen is a wonderfully city. I remember. I lived at a families place in my 20s. So nice. It doesn't surprise me.

Just be sure to bring a raincoat

A colleague of mine applied to the university of Bergen. At the interview, they gave him a promotional gift: an umbrella.

While everybody in Norway (including the citizens of Bergen) like to quip about the Bergen downpour, it really isn't that bad.

Annual precipitation is approx. 2,500mm, distributed over some 230 days.

The wettest place in Norway, on average, is Brekke a couple of hours north of Bergen, receiving some 3,500mm annually.

As I used to say when living in Bergen if a tourist asked me if it always rained there - 'No idea, I've only lived here for fifteen years!'

The Netherlands is already considered somewhat of a wet country, and I think it normally stays under 1000mm per year. So 8 months of 10mm per day seems more than a bit damp.

Why can't we support and encourage cycling without vilifying cars in these threads? I've seen plenty of places that do both very well, like Spain. Everybody has a car and bicycle (at least one) and uses whatever fits the purpose at the time.

I get it, when there's not cycling infrastructure everybody is forced to take the car even if it doesn't make any sense, like for short trips, good weather, single passenger, no significant cargo, etc. But there's plenty of occasions when you really need a car.

Also, taking Spain as an example again, scooters and motorcycles are often a better compromise. Practical speed for longer distances like commuting to work, better weather protection, larger cargo capacity, can take 2 people, etc. Why are they always ignored in these threads? Is this an American thing?

Where did you see people vilifying cars at the time of your post ?

I think it might be an American thing - at least the polarization part.

Over here in Poland some of my friends and relatives switched to scooters(125cc typically) when fuel prices spiked and are largely happy with the result - especially this one guy who used to daily a Nissan Pathfinder. Of course this becomes difficult in winter and inclement weather conditions, but I also see fewer cyclists then.

People need to realize that even the Dutch generally have cars and drive. It all works because they thought and fought hard to get to this point.

> People need to realize that even the Dutch generally have cars and drive.

It depends a lot where you are. Live in a major city and very few people have cars, they're expensive and spend a lot of time just sitting around taking up space and money. Go to a less dense area and they're a lot more common.

Also, pay-by-the-minute or whatever car rentals aren't uncommon for when people need them but don't want to actually own one.

> It depends a lot where you are.

Of course it does because it's like that everywhere in Europe. I wouldn't expect many e.g. Parisians to own cars.

My point was that there's a whole spectrum of lifestyles with rational choices behind them and you can't just brush over that with a simplistic solutions like "ban cars".

That's one of the biggest strawmens I've ever seen. Nobody is saying that they want to ban cars outright, they want to ban cars in city centers, in order to make them walkable.

'Everybody has a car and bicycle...'

I'm not sure this is true, but, on the wider point of cars v cycles it comes down to the usual problem of neither not wanting to share the same space. I have lived in Spain, though mainly live in the UK, and in either place I would not feel safe riding a bike (or scooter) on a public road.

I should add that car drivers and bike riders can be as bad as each other, it's just that car drivers usually have the upper hand in terms of protection.

As a cyclist, I don't have an issue sharing space with other traffic, but I do have an issue with the hyper-aggressive drivers that seek to scare and/or injure cyclists by not giving them enough space when overtaking. There's also the abusive drivers that shout at you and beep their horn at you if they disagree with any choices that you've made such as which road to use.

Drivers and riders are hardly comparable in terms of dangerous behaviour and that's without even taking into account any consideration of pollution and environmental destruction (e.g. car parks, lithium mining etc.)

> There's also the abusive drivers that shout at you and beep their horn at you

Yep, happened to me.

Also there is a 'compulsive overtaking syndrome' where a driver feels they must overtake the bicycle even if you are exceeding the speed limit on your bicycle. Even if there is not enough space.

The technical term for that is MGIF (Must Get In Front). It's especially bizarre when there's queueing traffic just ahead, so they overtake and then you almost immediately filter past them. It seems as though they're not able to look ahead and anticipate their own progress.

My absolute favorite (deep-fried sarcasm here) part of this is when they overtake and then slow down below your speed - regardless if you're driving or cycling.

As if it was somehow tiring for the car or something.

The absolute worst are drivers who do the MGIF thing then immediately do a left turn right in front of you!

Edit: Slight correction - the absolute worst were the kids who thought it would be amusing to throw a brick at me while I was commuting by bike through the outskirts of Edinburgh. Fortunately their aim wasn't very good.

As a cyclist in a town with a lot of cyclist, I see less aggressive behaviour in my town, than in the countryside where people are not used to cyclist. I was discussing with a fellow cyclist and we agreed that some countryside places were particularly full of aggressive drivers.

The more cyclist you have, the less aggressive it becomes

That matches with my experience too.

One particular problem with city motorists is mobile phone use, especially in traffic queues. People like to think that they can context switch between using their phone and paying attention to their vehicle surroundings, but I would disagree.

I spent a few months down in the country last year, and definitely encountered this. Drivers don't know how to react, so you tend to get reactions from given massive amounts of space (not that I'm complaining) to passing at breakneck speed.

Though there's other sides to it too, like the local youths who apparently find cycling inherently amusing and worth an attempt to intentionally run me off the road. It happens in other places too, there was an actual conviction last year because someone got recorded doing it at motorway speeds. I also learned last year that "rolling coal" or intentionally annoying cyclists with truck emissions is something in some parts of the US too.

On the plus side though, you can leave a bike just leaning against the outside of the store safely though, while an inadequate lock is grounds for getting your bike stolen in the city. I guess it's due to the lack of anonymity and places to sell stolen bikes out there. You will need to though, as there's nothing to lock the bike to outside the country store.

> Though there's other sides to it too, like the local youths who apparently find cycling inherently amusing and worth an attempt to intentionally run me off the road.

I second that, this winter I was cycling in the night, and local youths found it would be funny to scare me while they overtake me. One night I had 3 cars who did this "joke".

> As a cyclist, I don't have an issue sharing space with other traffic, but I do have an issue with the hyper-aggressive drivers that seek to scare and/or injure cyclists by not giving them enough space when overtaking

I haven't generally seen that in Germany, although I have only lived in cities with a generally good biking infrastructure. The only time when I get uncomfortably close is either due to fundamental infrastructure constrains (intersection squeezed in between buildings) or if some stupid delivery van parks on the bicycle path so I have to overtake it by crossing into the road. I wonder if more cyclist would normalise the situation so that abusive drivers calm down.

I'm in the UK and it's very noticeable how much nicer the German drivers have been when I've gone there (just Munich and Berlin). Most surprising was when drivers were wanting to pull out of a side street, but waited patiently for cyclists to go past without any hint of impatience or anger.

In the UK we have 'Vehicle Excise Duty' which used to be known as 'Road Tax'. There is a commonly held misconception that this 'tax' goes directly to the provision and maintenance of the road network (it doesn't, it's just another tax), hence the entitlement of some car drivers when confronted with, what they perceive as, a cycling free-loader.

For extra irony, sometimes those drivers are in EVs that also pay no emissions tax.

> But there's plenty of occasions when you really need a car.

Eh, depends on your needs, really. I've gotten along without one for decades; I keep meaning to learn to drive, but it never rises to the top of the priority list as I just don't really have a use for it.

Also works for me, though it is not optimal in my more rural area. Big cities should be fine.

People also just adjust. If you don't drive--or at least can't rent a car easily/don't want to--you just tend not to do activities or go places requiring that you do so. I couldn't get by day-to-day without a car but even if I lived in the city, I'd regularly want to drive one to visit people, do weekend activities, etc.

Eh, I find I can get wherever I need on public transport, in general. Now, that said, I'm not regularly going to very rural areas, or anything.

I mean, it definitely wouldn't work for everyone, but for me, I can walk or get public transport anywhere I need to go (and this is in Dublin, a city that is... not known for the excellence of its public transport; they'll finish the underground train one day...)

Now I'm in my late 30s, I also have the vague superstitious belief that the enforced walking is keeping me alive; if I wasn't doing that I'd be pretty sedentary.

If I lived in Boston, there's basically no way I'm getting to the mountains, north shore, Cape Cod, western suburbs/exurbs where a lot of people I know live, etc. without a car that I either own, rent, or someone else does. The city itself has a pretty good public transit system and there's even a pretty good commuter rail--but that's designed for coming into the city from suburban train stations with parking lots. So I'd be pretty much limited to the metro itself without a car in some form.

Which is fine for some people. They'll just naturally tend to avoid activities that are a pain to do in one way or another.

Yeah, my impression visiting the US has been that once you leave a big city, things become difficult to navigate alarmingly quickly. It's a bit different here; the suburbs and other cities and towns are usually fairly accessible via public transport.

I think that's generally true. While it's not like you can easily get to every corner of the British Isles or Western Europe generally without a car, there's a lot you can do out of Dublin or London with public transit and maybe the odd cab ride. Generally good as Boston's public transit system is, other than taking the train to New York City, flying somewhere, or taking a bus to someplace that is mostly not very interesting without car transportation on the other end, your options are pretty limited beyond what's covered by the greater metro transit system.

That's interesting to me because my family's weekend trips were almost always to such places.

There's more to do than in the city and the restaurants are generally better - you just need to drive there.

Ah. So I think basically anywhere near here that has restaurants that anyone would be bothered about making a trip for would also be within walking distance of a bus route. The places that you really _can't_ get to on public transport are very rural.

> Why can't we support and encourage cycling without vilifying cars in these threads?

Because cars pollute the air I breath, car horns constantly stress me, because politicians and city planners will use cars as a justification to develop cities as asphalt wastelands, because pedestrians and bikers are killed daily by unruly car drivers and so on. Plus somehow cars manage to bring out the worst in every person. Road rage is a thing.

> Everybody has a car and bicycle (at least one) and uses whatever fits the purpose at the time.

I don't have a car. I either bike, walk or use public transportation. I don't even live in an area where public transportation is great.

> scooters and motorcycles are often a better compromise

Still deadly in accidents and still polluting. The only thing that would make sense is low speed electric scooters, but those dont work well either in suburban sprawls like the US and Canada have.

One absurd but conventionally normal thing is that cities have to build wider streets just because car drivers will inevitably transform them into parking lots, on both sides, halving their width. Old streets often seem narrow, but they aren't really narrow when they aren't full of parked cars.

It would be lovely to see parked cars disappear if autonomous cars become common enough. However, that would also rely on people deciding against car ownership and moving over to a shared vehicle model.

Autonomous electric cars solve only some of the problems cars create while exarcebating others. In a world where semiconductors and rare minerals already cause a lot of geopolitical tensions, do you really think it is feasible to migrate most of the world cars to autonomous electric?

There is only one solution that solves all of the problems car create and has several other benefits. Rethink the urban and infrastructure development for walkability and shorter travels. We can't avoid it, like it or not.

I do agree. Electric cars were invented to save the car industry, not the planet.

I consider that the main problem with cars are their size and weight, so simply electrifying cars doesn't solve issues such as congestion or pollution from tyre wear (which can be comparable to the emissions from an ICE). Here in Bristol, UK, we've got a lot of people using hired e-scooters (the privately owned ones aren't allowed on public roads without a license, insurance etc.) and I think they're a great way to get people around cities. As they're small they don't need huge batteries and thus they're much lighter and carry far less kinetic energy into collisions. A large percentage of the batteries in electric cars are used to move the batteries around, rather than just moving the passenger(s) and vehicle. E-scooters and e-bikes are great for delivery services as they can avoid getting stuck in traffic congestion and the batteries can be swapped out for fully charged ones in a matter of minutes if needed.

> against car ownership and moving over to a shared vehicle model.

We already invented this: public transportation.

The problem is when public transport doesn't match with the people's requirements.

If I were made world leader, I'd subsidise public transport so that it's more or less free to use for the public in an attempt to wean them away from private cars. It would then make sense to expand the network as more and more people choose to use it.

They’re naturally opposed in a way. Bike infrastructure is car infrastructure, you need protected cycle paths etc where there’s a lot of cars or they’re going fast. If it wasn’t for cars, the current infrastructure is great for bikes.

I can recommend Carlton Reid's "Roads Were Not Built For Cars" book as a history of the early development of modern roads (i.e. tarmac). Many of them were funded by cycling societies before cars became commonplace. Also quite a bit of interesting history of the early cars.

https://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/

> Why can't we support and encourage cycling without vilifying cars in these threads?

In many places you have to win back some space from cars to make cycling/scootering/ anything viable.

For example in London we have a tonnel, Blackwall tonnel, built in 1890's - basically before cars existed. Its the only way to cross the river in east london for miles. It was open to people, horses, bicycles.

When cars became common, it was converted into a road, bicycles are banned. The story of non-car transportation is a story of routes and land being taken away from you.

Anyway, now in London they are building Silverstown tonnel near blackwalll tonnel, exclusively for cars. But there is still no way to cross the river on foot. I saw a news article about the old blackwall tonnel being pedestrianised, but then realised it was 1st of April.

Also they are building a railway for 100 billion in UK, and the original plan envisioned cycle route along all of it, from london to birmingham. But then budgets were cut and the cycle route was removed to save wopping 0.01% or whatever

> Also, taking Spain as an example again, scooters and motorcycles are often a better compromise.

I think this is a good point, there is also a wide array of electric non-bicycle mobility solution that fit well onto public transport and trains.

>Why are they always ignored in these threads? Is this an American thing?

I don't know but Vespa-type scooters are very uncommon in the US. Motorcycles are less rare but are widely considered (with some justification) to be dangerous as a form of transportation. (It doesn't help that there are some crazy motorcyclists out there though of course many aren't.)

May have something to do with the type of road infrastructure and traffic, or just custom, but don't really know.

> I don't know but Vespa-type scooters are very uncommon in the US

why? They are also quite common in germany for people living in the city and very useful to get around in the city. I personally bike but I see the appeal.

No idea about the why. Vespas were a bit of thing maybe 20 years or so ago in the US but, while I think I know one person who owns something along those lines, they just aren't very common in my experience. (Maybe because car ownership is higher and it tends to be either/or?)

there is one thing I hate more than a car and thats loud motorcycles that ruin everybody's peace

because cars pollute, produce a lot of noise, take a lot of space when not used(so majority of time), infra for them is expensive(roads and parkings) and it should be maintained frequently and bc of them a lot of people die (at least where average speed is >30km/h) I'm fine with electric motorcycles that are speed limited by design and have slower start acceleration by design, this would be really nice

I think it's mainly a U.S. thing as their cities are designed around personal car usage. That leads to the separation of living spaces and facilities (i.e. the anti-15 minute city) as more roads need to be built to cater for all the traffic which then leads to the distances increasing until a car is needed for almost every journey. Once you have cars dominating as the form of transport, it becomes dangerous to use other vehicles as most drivers will inevitably just be looking out for other cars and not two-wheelers.

I find it genuinely hilarious that we need to consult with a psychologist to create a place with a comforting atmosphere. As if what makes a place feel nice and comfortable is some kind of theoretical knowledge we just don't have access too. It's a miracle we regular old people avoid creating horrible and uncomfortable living spaces for ourselves.

As a Norwegian - it's always weird to me to discover news from Norway, that I haven't heard about in Norwegian (news) before, on international sites.

1.8 miles? Not that impressive, more of a curiosity of governmental funding.

I always wondered if elevated biking lanes, especially in urban areas, would be far cheaper and safer than bike lanes intermingled with surface streets. Some high strength plastic that is lego-assembled and bolted to buildings. or maybe just suspended from cables between the skyscrapers.

I know everyone loves to hate, but the boring project would be great for things like this. Yes they are targeting auto tunnels, but with EV come a far easier range of mixed vehicle (scooter, ebike, moped, golf cart, side-by-side, atv, etc) use, without those noxious tailpipes that make tunnels problematic (yeah you still need air ventilation, but probably don't need complex systems for hoovering out carbon monoxide). The boring company demo is kind of stupid for full size cars... but for man-portable vehicles (aka a healthy human could lift it) it makes a lot more sense.

Although really I think this is still an urban compromise design. Really the influx car streets should be forced to be elevated or tunnels, and the entire surface area of cities are ebikes, scooters, and only heavily restricted permitted delivery trucks.

So while it is cool that they tunneled down the transport, what really needs to happen is that all car transport in urban areas is moved away from killing bikers and pedestrians.

Sometimes I wonder why the Dutch hasn't done this yet.

But then I remember, it's entirely flat here.

Mentioned here before, but there is also a tram tunnel (well, light rail*) next to it (new line opened just recently.) I work near it but I haven't took a peek in yet ... I need 30-45 minutes to walk through it :)

Out of curiosity - what role, if any, does Norway's massive oil wealth play in these types of infrastructure projects? (Can the "pension fund" directly fund this?)

No, only about 3% of the yield is used in the state budget yearly. The oil fund does not invest any of its money in Norway in order to avoid dutch disease. It is not earmarked for any specific use, but instead gets used to make up the difference in tax revenue and state budget. NBIM has more information in English about the fund here: https://www.nbim.no/en/

All petroleum surpluses go into the Government Pension Fund Global (one of three wealth funds that the government manages). The state is allowed to withdraw from this fund, mostly to cover shortfalls in the state budget.

The target maximum withdrawal rate since 2018 has been 3%. This rate is a guideline only, and the government is allowed to exceed it. Since 2000, in most years the withdrawal rate has much far below the limit (see charts here [1]), but sometimes exceeded, most recently in in 2020 and 2021.

[1] https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/okonomi-og-budsjett/norsk...

Sewer tunnels are 0.1% of the cost of car tunnels, for a wide variety of reasons both good and bad.

Elon Musk's The Boring Company is trying to take advantage of this to make car tunnels cheaper.

This is a much better idea. Cycling tunnels are much smaller, don't need to deal with exhaust, have fewer emergency scenarios, ...

Amazing project!

However, I would not do it by foot, even with the best intentions like they seems to have 40minutes in a tunnel will bring me down ahah

i suppose the air won't be so bad because of a lack of cars?

i love the idea of it but i think it might end up being a "dangerous neighborhood", i hope they have cameras

>Halfway through, a sundial shows the time.

I'd love to know how that works in a tunnel!

Talk about not only burying but practically omitting the lede!

Apparently it's quite the impressive underground sundial.

https://bicyclenetwork.com.au/newsroom/2023/03/30/worlds-lon...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-worlds-longest...

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-longest-cyclin...

So it's an art installation reminiscent of a sundial, not an actual sundial.

Petrostate mega projects.

Great contribution, thanks !

It's good the rest of the world has no tonnels longer than checks notes 2 miles?

30 million for a 3 km tunnel; hardly megaproject. Some back of the napkin math: That's around .6% of just income tax from Bergen; hardly petrostate.

I’m not talking only about this specific tunnel. Norway spends quite a number of their petro dollars to make tunnels in the middle of nowhere to another middle id nowhere.

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