Future
There have been proposals to reduce or eliminate passenger transport on the line. A report by the Institute of Transport Economics in 2004 concluded that the low population density, the lack of termination in a city and the nature of being a branch line with correspondence at Dombås made it impossible to attract sufficient ridership to make operations profitable.
Norsk Bane and Deutsche Bahn have made a proposal to construct a high-speed railway between Ålesund and Oslo, which would run through Romsdalen. The line would connect to a proposed high-speed line between Oslo and Trondheim at Dombås, but would avoid going through Åndalsnes and instead pass through Bjorli and Valldal before reaching Sunnmøre. The branch would be 193 kilometers (120 mi) long, of which 89 kilometers (55 mi) would run in tunnel and 13 kilometers (8 mi) be on bridges and viaducts. It is estimated to cost NOK 30 billion and give a travel time of 2 hours and 33 minutes from Ålesund to Oslo. Because of 1.25 percent gradients, the line is suitable for freight trains. During daytime, freight trains would operate on the line in 160 kilometres per hour (99 mph), while they could operate slower during the night. The proposal calls for twelve trains per direction per day between Ålesund and Oslo, and six trains per day between Ålesund and Trondheim.
Read more about this topic: Rauma Line
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)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“But I choose to think he is escaped from the possibility of falling into any future afflictions, and that neither the malice of his pretended friends nor the sufferings of his real ones can ever again rend and torment his honest heart.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)