Future
In 2011, the Asker Line from Lysaker to Sandvika and a new Lysaker Station is scheduled to open. This will increase the capacity and regularity along the Drammen Line. The opening of four tracks at Lysaker will allow NSB to run all local trains that previously have run to Skøyen all the way to Lysaker. The closed Høvik Station will be used to turn trains. The Oslo Tunnel remains the bottleneck west of Oslo, so no more trains can run westwards, although more will be able to continue past Skøyen.
In 2008, NSB ordered 50 Stadler FLIRT multiple units, to be designated Class 74, with delivery between 2011 and 2013. Twenty-six of these will be delivered in a commuter train configuration. NSB holds an option for an additional 100 units. The trains will have a maximum speed of 200 kilometers per hour (120 mph) and a faster acceleration than the existing classes. The combination of the Asker Line and more rolling stock will allow NSB to operate a more aggressive service after a major restructuring of the lines in 2012. In particular, there will be between five and seven-minute headway on the sections between Asker and Lillestrøm, and a twenty-minute headway to Oslo Airport and Eidsvoll.
The next larger railway construction around Oslo is scheduled to be the Follo Line, which will connect Oslo Central Station directly with Ski. The 22.5-kilometer (14.0 mi) long line is planned to be built nearly entirely in a single tunnel and will allow speeds at 200 kilometers per hour (120 mph). It will allow higher speeds and capacity southwards for the lines to Moss and Rakkestad, as well as regional trains to Østfold and Sweden. The line is scheduled for completion in 2018. Parliament has passed the Ringerike Line, which would run from Sandvika to Hønefoss Station on the Bergen Line. While mainly proposed as a shortening of the Bergen Line, the line would double up as a commuter train line, allowing Hønefoss and Ringerike significantly faster public transport to the capital area. The line would be 40 kilometers (25 mi) long and allow speeds of 200 kilometers per hour (120 mph). However, no financing has been secured for the project.
Read more about this topic: Oslo Commuter Rail
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“I am always glad to think that my education was, for the most part, informal, and had not the slightest reference to a future business career. It left me free and untrammeled to approach my business problems without the limiting influence of specific training.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“The future is made of the same stuff as the present.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)