Faster!

Last month, the Greater Copenhagen Region experienced a rather dramatic rainfall. A few areas further away from the city were actually flooded. And a bit of earth slided away from under the train tracks on the line I use every morning on my way to work. More than a month later, they still drive slowly on that part of the rails.

Two weeks later, we had sun. It made the tracks start to expand and shortly after, the trains had to slow down as the tracks were now winding more than expected.
Of course, all this was insignificant as problems with signals have generally kept the trains running slower than usual. The weather (no matter what kind) is just there for additional spice.
Traffic research is an area of research in its own right – I believe it is part of the same general field of science as chaos theory. One part of their scientific arsenal is comparing train schedules over time, it seems. At least someone in the field did that recently. It may be a crude methodology, but it can show some interesting results: trains are no faster today than they were 40 years ago.

I recently saw parts of an old «Die Hard» film – the one taking place at an airport. Some of the scenes take place in an airplane circling the airport, waiting for clearance to land. At one point, the British air hostess says to a passenger: «We’re like British Rail. We may be late, but we’ll get there». The plane later crashes to the ground in a mighty explosion.
Having just been to London, I noticed that although the public transport may have its problems (including a minor flooding in the Underground), they were improving. Stations were being renovated as part of a billion pound renovation project.

So in Denmark, surely the same kind of progress must be on the way, right? Wrong! Yes, we have a metro, which has been a great improvement but busses and s-trains, which serve many more are worse off so the overall picture is grim. And with a bridge linking Funen and Zealand, we still don’t drive faster than 40 years ago.

Yet the only major project on the drawing board is a bridge linking Zealand and Germany. Mind you, it will not be connected to the high speed train network that is growing in Europe. Ignoring that we can already drive to Germany via Jutland (thanks to the aforementioned existing bridge), I just want to know when my daily commute will be on time. Now that would be a prestige project in my book.