Ten years with a fixed link
1 July 2010 was the ten-year mark of the opening of the Öresund Bridge. The considerable improvement in accessibility across southern Öresund accelerated an integration process between both sides of the sound, and mainly between the two largest cities of the region – Copenhagen and Malmö. All traffic has increased since the bridge opened, but commuting traffic has definitely risen in particular.
Ferries in the North – Bridge in the South
During the 1990s, between two and three million cars crossed Öresund yearly. By 2010, the number of vehicles had increased to 9.2 million, and in total, 34.2 million travellers crossed Öresund by car, bus, train or ferry.
After a minor downturn in traffic in the beginning of the 1990s, the number of cars crossing Öresund increased by an average of ten percent per year from 1995 to 1999. New routes, more departures, lower prices and economic growth in Denmark and Sweden were the reasons for the increase in traffic. The opening of the Öresund Bridge resulted in an even greater rise in traffic by 43 percent, and all traffic across Öresund grew by an average of ten percent each year during the period 2001-2007.
However, 2008 was a particular year, since traffic across Öresund increased by three percent – which meant an increase of 5.1 percent on the Öresund Bridge and a drop of 2.6 percent for ferry traffic between Helsingborg and Helsingør. This trend continued in 2009, when all traffic across Öresund dropped by 1.2 percent. The Öresund Bridge had a slight rise of 0.5 percent, while ferry traffic dropped by 6 percent. The weak growth of these two years clearly marks the recession that had hit both Denmark and Sweden in the wake of the financial crisis. In 2010, the traffic flow across Öresund decreased slightly for the first time, as the total traffic volume across Öresund fell by 1.5 percent. In this connection, the Öresund Bridge experienced a decrease of 0.4 percent, while the ferries experienced a decrease of 4.9 percent.
Car traffic makes up more than the lion's share, 92 percent, of all traffic across Öresund, while truck traffic comprises seven percent, and bus traffic one percent. 76 percent of all road traffic across Öresund is over the Öresund Bridge. 79 percent of passenger car traffic chooses to cross Öresund via the Öresund Bridge, while the ferries between Helsingborg and Helsingør have more than half (52 percent) of the truck traffic. 75 percent of all persons travelling over Öresund do so via the Öresund Bridge, either by car or by train.
- Traffic across Öresund 1990-2010
Source: Shippax and Öresund Bridge
- Travellers across Öresund
Source: Shippax and Öresund Bridge
Source: Shippax and Öresund Bridge
Travellers across Öresund
Source: Shippax and Öresund Bridge
Traffic across the Öresund Bridge
208 million people have crossed the Öresund Bridge either by train or car since it opened in 2000 – 126 million by car and 82 million by train. This is comparable to all of Denmark’s and Sweden’s populations taking the trip across the Öresund Bridge as many as fourteen times each during the first ten years. The 126 million passenger car travellers can be broken down into 54.5 million vehicles during the period 2000-2010.
Train Traffic
Train traffic has undergone an amazing development. From 2001 to 2009, passenger rail traffic increased from 4.9 million to 11.1 million passengers – an increase of 125 percent. In 2010, passenger rail traffic fell slightly to 10.9 million passengers, which however still was an increase of 122 percent since 2001.
In 2010, 55,800 passenger trains and 9,700 freight trains crossed the bridge.
The Öresund train has functioned mainly as an internal means of transport within the region, with 90 percent of the passengers travelling regionally. Four of five train passengers live in Sweden and one in five in Denmark. A very small percentage of passengers are immigrants.
Commuting is also furthering the rail industry, and about 60 percent of the travellers on the Öresund train are commuting to work or to their studies. The remaining 40 percent are mostly leisure travellers, while a small percentage are travelling on business or holiday.
Passenger rail traffic is mainly run by DSBFirst, which took over operations of the Öresund trains in January 2009. Freight traffic by rail on the Öresund Bridge is divided into several different companies. On the Danish side, the train network goes past Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport, via Copenhagen’s central station and Nørreport to Helsingør. On the Swedish side, the network branches out from Malmö to Gothenburg, Kalmar and Karlskrona. The city tunnel through the central parts of Malmö opened in December 2010, and has shortened travel time between Copenhagen’s central station and Malmö central station by 5 minutes. The city tunnel also runs through two new train stations in Malmö – Triangeln and Hyllie.
Car Traffic
Expectations were high for car traffic when the Öresund Bridge opened. Perhaps even a little too high for reality to live up to them. After a warm summer month when many people crossed the bridge just to do so, traffic during all of the autumn 2000 dropped and a bottom level was reached on 1 January 2001 when an average of 4,700 vehicles crossed the bridge per day.
The picture today looks entirely different. The amount of traffic crossing the link on a cold day in January 2001 was the same as the morning rush hour today between 6 and 9 am. In 2010, an average of 19,400 vehicles used the bridge per day. This is 140 percent more than in 2001, the first full year that the Öresund Bridge was in operation. During the period 2001 to 2007, traffic rose between 10 and 17 percent per year. In 2008 this trend was broken when the increase in traffic slowed down during the second half of the year, as a result of the economic slump that hit both Denmark and Sweden in the wake of the financial crisis. The year 2010 saw the first ever decrease in traffic flow.
All types of traffic have increased during the first ten years of the Öresund Bridge, but commuting has been particularly remarkable. Today, commuting accounts for 42 percent of all passenger car traffic, compared to 5 percent in 2001. Two factors can explain this development. Firstly, the significant price differences in housing on the Danish and Swedish sides of the sound have led many Danes to move to Skåne. Secondly, the economic boom in the Danish economy up until 2007, which led to a labour shortage in Denmark, was partly solved by many Swedes getting jobs in the Copenhagen area, thus becoming commuters. These Swedes have largely remained on the Danish labour market and are today a natural part of by and large every workplace in the capital city area. As Sweden is currently experiencing a tiger economy, this trend might change in the future – partly because many of the Danes living in Sweden might move back to Denmark, as the Danish crown no longer is particularly strong compared to the Swedish crown, and also because a number of Swedish industries has begun recruiting employees in Denmark.
The regional business traffic comprises 14 percent of passenger car traffic on the Öresund Bridge. The business sector has begun to take advantage of the potential of the Öresund Bridge by setting up offices and departments on both sides of the sound. Sales across Öresund have also increased.
Holiday and leisure traffic accounts for the remaining 44 percent of passenger car traffic on the Öresund Bridge. Along with the financial crisis, another phenomenon marked the traffic across the Öresund Bridge. The Danish crown is fixed to the euro, while the Swedish crown floats. Because small currencies are subject to pressure during financial crises, the Swedish currency depreciated in value. This has affected Öresund traffic in that many Danes crossed to the other side of Öresund for shopping, and in particular retail trade in Malmö benefited greatly from the many Danish customers during 2009 and parts of 2010. As mentioned previously, the situation has now started to change, as the Swedish crown has stabilized, and hence it is no longer as attractive for Danes to shop in Sweden. This shows in the decrease in the number of persons travelling across Öresund. For persons travelling by ferry, this number fell by 10.7 percent, and by 1.9 percent for persons travelling across the bridge in 2010.
The Capacity of the Öresund Bridge
The motorway of the Öresund Bridge has a capacity for about 4,000 cars per hour in each direction. In particular, the capacity in the tunnel will be the limiting factor for traffic on the bridge, but before congestion on the link itself becomes critical, there will be a capacity problem on the access roads.
Train traffic across the Öresund Bridge varies between high-frequency passenger traffic and international freight trains, evenly distributed during the day, as well as sporadic passenger and freight trains. Mainly because of the different traffic forms, the scheduled traffic during rush hour is limited to about ten trains per hour in each direction.
Within a few years, train traffic every five minutes will be needed during rush hour between Malmö and Copenhagen to handle the increasing numbers of commuters. However, there will be no capacity problems on the bridge itself with optimal traffic planning. On the other hand, the capacity problem at the Copenhagen airport, on the Södra Stambanan in Skåne and the rail section in central Copenhagen will be further worsened in the near future if capacity does not increase.
A new forecast carried out by the Öresund Bridge Consortium scales down the expected traffic development on the Öresund Bridge, which implies that the capacity limit for the highway will not be reached until 2035. A new forecast for the traffic development on the Öresund Bridge also shows, that traffic in the year 2030 is expected to reach 35,000 vehicles and 49,000 train passengers a day. An earlier forecast, presented in January 2008, showed that the same traffic figures were to have been reached already in 2015 for car traffic, and in 2022 for train traffic. This forecast was based on figures from 2007, when the economic boom was at its height.
