This Small City Metro is Bigger than Yours | Oslo Metro Explained

I have made a lot of videos complementing small European cities on their impressive Transit networks frequently annoying locals who insisted cities with 2 million plus people should never be called small and they're probably right but the topic city of today's video is truly comparatively small with its impressively extensive Metro Network given it has only around a million people or arguably less living in it and that's Oslo in Norway and some claim it has the most Metro per capita in the world depending on how you define Metro which is my kind of City so let's take a look foreign [Music] all transit explained videos naturally need to start with showing you around the city we're talking about and since this is Norway naturally Oslo is located at the end of a fjord known creatively as the Oslo Fjord here is the city center of Oslo which includes major fairy docks the Norwegian Parliament and the Royal Palace to the east of the city center we have the Central Station which is surrounded by development on all sides and has a number of surface terminating platforms as well as connections through to a cross City Tunnel known as the Oslo tunnel again creative names the existence of this tunnel is really impressive again given oslo's size as it turns out Norway's busiest station is Oslo Central and the second busiest is National Theater the only station within the Oslo tunnel to the south of the Central Station are a number of new development areas and the famously modern Oslo Opera House zooming out also spreads out in all directions but development is constrained by mountains which hem in the city on most sides as well as numerous watercourses from lakes to rivers and the Oslo fjord now this video is all about the Metro of Oslo so let's get talking about that I should say that the Metro is locally known as the tibon or t-bond and the Metro signs feature a t which is for similar reasons to the tibana in Stockholm A system that has a decent amount in common with Oslo and that you should definitely check out in my video in the top right corner like many other cities such as Stockholm oslo's rapid transit system started with trams which made their way into tunnels and over the decades those tunnels were upgraded and came together to form the central tunnel of the Oslo Metro the central tunnel is still a critical part of the Metro network with all five Services running through it the tunnel also features a particularly strange and long gap between National Theater and mayorstuin a distance of almost two kilometers through the center of the city within the Gap a former and now abandoned station exists and there have long been discussions about building a new infill station here like can save Valencia there was a long period of time where the Metro was isolated in two separate systems because trains could not travel across the center as you've probably figured Oslo is very much not in the Toronto or Paris School of Rapid Transit Network design and thus has many branches which feed the central tunnel let's talk about those based on the services that operate the one service starts way up at the top of a mountain just about a kilometers walk from a ski hill yes you can take the metro to go skiing and then winds its way down into Oslo and when I say wind I mean it despite this it's actually double tracked right to the end of the line which is something that isn't true of the Metro of Valencia or even Vancouver's Canada line but is true of all of oscillos Metro lines this line in particular is easily one of the most scenic and beautiful pieces of Metro infrastructure in the world you can also see the line's tram Origins as there are Level Crossings quite a few of them actually and even tram style staggered stops despite the third rail power used across the system these days the line also has something in common with the Paris Metro a one-directional station albeit not as interesting because it isn't underground as the line comes into Central Oslo it meets with the other tracks from the north and Southwest in a series of two flying Junctions hilariously though there is still a grade crossing less than a kilometer away to the West all of these great Crossings are again because this system originally operated trams and a lot of the alignments are directly adjacent to roadways just as it would have been on a system from here the one service continues through mayorstuin and the City Center tunnel and then beyond past toyan and health sphere where most Services terminate with the limited servers continuing that we will come back to the two service starts west of the city center where it runs on a mostly above ground alignment with basic stations but full grade separation before arriving at the city center and combining with the one just west of mayorstuin after passing through the central tunnel the line continues Beyond toyan and hellsphere before turning to the Northeast and serving a number of dense housing developments on the mountain slope on an increasingly tunneled alignment which is thus fully grade separated the three service starts roughly 14 kilometers Southwest of central Oslo the furthest any of the Metro lines travels from the city center this section of the line previously had a number of grade Crossings not unlike the Western half of the one service but the line was upgraded to rebuild the alignment to remove grade Crossings and extend platforms about 10 years ago the line winds its way to Becca stua where things get quite interesting as the island platform also features a cutout at its end to accommodate Suburban trams from oslo's tram system a nice reminder of the origins of the Metro as it turns out this section of metro line is shared between the adorable little Oslo trams and big Oslo Metro trains which thanks to the heavy branching of the network leaves sufficient space between them to accommodate the traps east of bekhastua at ringsteback Metro trains stop but trams bypass the station slightly further east at yard the trams do stop with separate platforms off the Metro Mainline adjacent to the main Yar platforms that allow trams to be bypassed as necessary a little further to the east still and a fly under exists alongside another curve of track allowing trams to enter the right-of-way without blocking Metro trains from here if the services continue Northeast before uniting with the two service just west of smearstad station and then traveling into and through the center of Oslo with the tunnel the three remains together with the two service until just east of Hillary station before turning South on a mixed alignment that begins above ground but grows increasingly tunneled as it travels along the Mountainside akin to the two to the north the forest Surface starts just about two kilometers north of the Eastern Terminus of the three or one kilometer west of the surface's second to last station where an extension is really begging to be made this section of the four which winds its way North on a nearly entirely above ground alignment is shared with some limited one Services east of hellsphere after passing through the central tunnel the four turns North and then Northeast on an above ground alignment to the National Stadium before diving underground and heading due east to the comparatively dense neighborhood of nidelin from here the line runs South and then East and North coming tantalizingly close to the Metro Corridor east of the central tunnel nearly forming a loop before running Northeast on a mostly above ground alignment that grows in increasingly tunneled all the way to the city limits the final service on the system is the super weird 5 which proves Humanity's desire to have Metro Loops wherever possible the five service starts in the Northeast with the four and runs all the way South toward the city's center before diverging to connect across to the other Metro lands just east of toyan after passing through Carl berner's place from here the five goes through the central tunnel All the Way North and back around to Carl berner's plus this time from the north rather than the East before running once again through the central tunnel after passing by the National Stadium a second time the five service diverges to the north on an entirely above ground alignment to songspen a station less than half a kilometer south of the shore of the beautiful Lake of the same name now as I alluded to before Oslo has big Metro trains which is again surprising because Oslo is not a big city and usually if a small city does have a metro it's definitely a light Metro which oslo's roughly 110 meter long 3.2 meter wide trains wide enough to accommodate a transverse 3-2 seating arrangement are not these are not unlike the Metro trains seen in Helsinki and just like them feature bottom contact third rail to be fair not every service runs full-length train as the one for example cannot accommodate them with its short platforms but this is still really impressive and oslo's older trains which were also dual power again connecting back to the system's tram Origins were even wider at 3.3 meters as it turns out also's new mx-3000 stock which has been in use since the 2000s make up the entire fleet and are closely related to the v-sets in Vienna a system you can learn more about in a previous explainer they were also designed by Porsche and built by Siemens given Norway is known to be a country with no shortage of money and a pigeon for Mega projects especially time channels you'd probably expect Oslo was going full Stockholm or even Paris and massively expanding its Metro but that's not really the case and again let's be fair Oslo already has a really big Metro System given its size and so the Metro actually only has one major project currently under construction that would be the new fornabu line which is a new fully underground line from just west of mayorstuen to the peninsula of fornabu via square and Lisa care which are both major Rail stations now the history of this peninsula which is absolutely booming with development from major offices for companies like Ecuador Norway's National Oil Company previously known as stat oil as well as telenor ABB in Accenture as well as the major new telenor Arena which will have a stop on the line the land here was freed up in the late 1990s when oslo's main airport was moved from vornibu to a location 35 kilometers north of the city this new site is less land constrained doesn't create noise pollution for Central Oslo and is served by the very impressive flight ticket service which runs on a high-speed rail line that was built under the airport when it was first developed and which features a particularly impressive over 10 kilometer long high speed tunnel from just east of central Oslo under the mountains to just west of lillestron the service which runs every 10 minutes to Central Oslo makes the journey in less than 20 and some sort Services travel beyond the city center including a stop at lisaker now with the new extension also Central tunnel will become even more heavily used and so a new roughly eight kilometer City Center tunnel for the Metro will be built in the future in the shape of letter M starting at mayor student in the west serving a new station before dipping South to connect to stutina heading back North once again to service a new station before cutting east across the existing tunnel to connect just east of toyin the new tunnel is good but it does feel odd that a better alignment couldn't be found and thus key areas of central Oslo North of the city center and south of the city center particularly along the Waterfront will not be closely served by Metro that being said as with other cities with heavily interlined City Center tunnels from Munich to Brisbane to Stockholm the additional capacity will be a game changer for the network as it should allow services to split between the two tunnels nearly doubling frequency and thus capacity across the entire network which is the powerful thing about networks which are so heavily branched getting new tunnels that might make you wonder though how did Oslo get so much Metro in the first place well the simple answer is by building a very large portion of the network above ground and by reusing existing tram infrastructure even as newer stations and extensions are increasingly tunneled something which is still relatively cost effective in Norway given the country's vast experience undertaking such engineering works of course structurally a heavily branched network is also probably more cost effective because it minimizes duplication of the most expensive underground city center infrastructure and builds more track where it's cheap in the suburbs s is happening in Oslo additional capacity can be later unlocked by adding City Center capacity there are also simpler things like the fact that some level Crossings exist even today and the system's basic stations even on the great separated lines which usually feature minor weather protection and ramps and overpasses rather than elevators or escalators all in all though also's Metro is super impressive especially for what is truly a small City thanks for watching thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: RMTransit

Views: 315,087

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning, oslo, oslo metro

Id: irCCyFM0LtU

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 29 2022