News By Tag Industry News News By Location Country(s) Industry News
| The Secrets Behind the Bergen Light RailwayThomas Potter, Senior Transportation Engineer, Norconsult AS, Norway, joins Construction IQ to discuss the challenges faced and lessons learned by the Bergen Light Railway project, which can be of use to those involved in similar initiatives.
By: IQPC - HW Construction IQ: Hello and welcome to this IQPC podcast presented by Construction IQ. I’m your host, Helen Winsor, and today I’m delighted to be joined by Thomas Potter, senior transportation engineer at Norconsult AS, Norway. Thomas, welcome to the show. How are you today? T Potter: Very well. Thank you very much. Construction IQ: Thanks for joining us. Now, today we’re going to look at the secrets behind the Bergen Light Railway, which is a project that you’re heavily involved with. So, firstly, Thomas, how did you end up building light rail in Norway? What led to this? T Potter: We were lucky enough to have a project available at the perfect time. We had been talking about light rail reintroducing tramways in Bergen since the tram was closed down in 1965. And I started working on this project in the late 1980s as an idea. And we got politicians interested in it and we started doing the planning. But the main problem, as with all of these projects, is financing. Luckily, though, in the year 2000, the city toll ring was coming up for renewal. The city of Bergen has a toll ring around the CBD, the central business district, that dates back from 1985 and it was planned as a 15 year project to accelerate road building. Well, in 2000, the politicians were thinking about renewing that, but they couldn’t agree on using all the money for roads and suddenly there was an interest in doing something on the public transportation side of things and our project was sitting there, well-planned at that time, and it was a very lucky coincidence that both the financing and the plans were available at the same time. So, in 2001, the city council approved the project and the financing was in place. Construction IQ: Great. So, what are the particular challenges of building light rail in West Norway and in Bergen in particular? Thomas Potter will be speaking at The IQPC Urban Rail Infrastructure Conference, which will take place from 19 - 21 June, 2012, in Vienna, Austria. For more information about this event please visit www.urbanrailinfrastructure.com/ To download this interview in full please click here - http://www.urbanrailinfrastructure.com/ End
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Account Phone Number