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It's the escape tunnel for a tram tunnel with an extra coat of paint: https://www.lifeinnorway.net/bergen-cycle-tunnel/ https://www.lifeinnorway.net/bergen-cycl

It's the escape tunnel for a tram tunnel with an extra coat of paint: https://www.lifeinnorway.net/bergen-cycle-tunnel/ https://www.lifeinnorway.net/bergen-cycle-tunnel/

cjrp 3y ago
> It will cost an additional NOK 500 million to upgrade the tunnel from an emergency service to one that can be used daily. $46M USD, to save cyclists 5.5km/20 minutes; that seems like a pretty good return.
- sweettea 3y ago
  Indeed, if we assume cyclists use the tunnel 100 days a year going both ways through it, thats saving each one nearly 60+ hours a year. If each one's time is worth $20, that is over a thousand dollars per cyclist per year - it only takes 9k cyclists to make the savings outweigh the costs in five years.
  - elygre 3y ago
    And assuming that this will increase the number of people who choose to bike instead of to drive, you can also add savings for all the remaining drivers who get a slightly easier commute.
    - thecopy 3y ago
      And net reduced road maintenance and external costs coming for reduced car usage
    - cjrp 3y ago
      And a healthier society (on the whole) as people are encouraged to cycle. Less diabetes, etc.
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        And a happier society as it's far more fun to cycle than to drive in traffic
  - k4rli 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - patall 3y ago
      The calculation given is probably not right, but every european (and ideally world-wide) infrastructure project will have a cost to benefit analysis. Even if just to decide on which project to build next.
    - LudwigNagasena 3y ago
      It sounds very nice and morally fulfilling to denigrate any numerical calculus of welfare; but in the end you still have to deal with monetary budgets that represent limited societal supply of labor and resources. You may try to take a moral high ground and say that people are more important than $X million, but those money also represent potential housing, cancer treatment research, green energy investment, etc that won’t be financed. You cannot get away from measuring value of time and toil of people, at least implicitly. Why not then make it explicit and be mindful of it?
      - goodpoint 3y ago
        > It sounds very nice and morally fulfilling to denigrate any numerical calculus of welfare Many of those "numerical calculus" measure only savings in time, fuel, etc and attribute ZERO value to saving lives, improving quality of life and even improving mental health. Such calculations are not pragmatic, they are highly ideological.
        dsfyu404ed 3y ago
        Ideologues everywhere use statistics as a pretext for their lies. Water is wet. More breaking news at 11.
        goodpoint 3y ago
        You are missing the point completely.
  - aziaziazi 3y ago
    Why only 100d/y while Norwegian works around 190d/y? In my experience people tends to have a “main” commute mode that they only turn away from in exceptional cases. Easier to live with habits that mixing your timetables every other day.
    - MagnumOpus 3y ago
      People might use cars or public transport instead of a bike to commute if there is heavy rain or snow. This is an important consideration in Bergen which is notoriously the rainiest city in Europe (it rains more than half the time).
      - DeathArrow 3y ago
        So there are places in Europe where it rains more than in UK?
        wartijn_ 3y ago
        Yes. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Albania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_precipitation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...
        arethuza 3y ago
        That's averages over the whole countries though - the north and west of the UK (particularly the Scottish Highlands and the Lake District) are a lot wetter than the south-east where London is. Also, "volume of rain" might be misleading because it doesn't give you a feeling for how often it rains. The Highlands in particular can have a light rain that falls for weeks at a time (or at least seems like it if you are in a tent).
        smugma 3y ago
        Most of the Bay Area gets about the same amount of rain as London. The key difference is that in Cupertino/Los Gators/Palo Alto it rains less often but with more intensity.
  - goodpoint 3y ago
    Plus the health benefits of cycling and the ones of not being involved in driving accidents. Plus the saving in car TCO and fuel, plus less road maintenance.
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  Let's assume the saving of one life....
  - rhn_mk1 3y ago
    Okay. Taking the 20min saved per ride from the article, and 300 rides that would otherwise take the longer route per day out of my ass, we get 100 hours saved per day. That's approximately 4 days saved per day. From https://www.fhi.no/en/op/hin/population/life-expectancy/ https://www.fhi.no/en/op/hin/population/life-expectancy/, life expectancy in Norway is about 82 years. Together, that means the tunnel will save one human life in about 20 years, not taking into account pedestrians, or indeed realistic usage numbers.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      300 users a day sounds improbably low for an urban route.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  > $46M USD, to save cyclists 5.5km/20 minutes; that seems like a pretty good return. That obviously depends on a lot of parameters, not least how many cyclists are impacted and how often.
- ubercore 3y ago
  And avoid 20 minutes of getting soaked in Bergen, also a plus.
- altacc 3y ago
  One of the factors other replies haven't considered is that Norway routinely spends a lot on transport infrastructure, with cost-benefit just one of the factors. This project was relatively cheap compared to the constant building of tunnels for cars that happens across the country. A typical project costs many times more than this. Per capita Norway is one of the highest spenders in the world, due to the size and low population density of the country. Even with all this spending, transport in some places, especially the north, is slow & inefficient. This has resulted in a high number of airports and Norwegians flying more than almost every other nationality.
skrebbel 3y ago
Smart move!
rob74 3y ago
Strange, I have never heard of a separate escape tunnel for a tram tunnel. Even German U-Bahn/S-Bahn (which I am most familiar with) tunnels usually just have a walkway beside the tracks that leads to the next station or emergency exit. But I guess that also depends on length between possible stations/exits, or it's due to newer regulations, or maybe it was a "mixed calculation" ("if we build a separate tunnel, it's more expensive, but it can also be used as a bike/pedestrian tunnel").
- usrusr 3y ago
  Subway tunnels usually aren't that far from the surface, even those that dive/rise between stops. So they just dot in a few emergency stairs to the surface if stops are too far apart. This tram tunnel however apparently is a shortcut through some mountain (because otherwise, the bike sibling wouldn't make much difference), so the emergency exit problem isn't easily solved by digging vertically.
- doikor 3y ago
  The problem here is similar to underwater tunnels. Making an emergency exit straight up is not possible or too expensive. In this case it is too expensive/unpractical as you would have to dig several hundred meters up a mountain. Also a tunnel going sideways is easier for those who can not walk. And this long stairs up could be a problem even to those who can walk. For those who don’t know the tunnels goes through a 477m high mountain/hill and both ends are roughly at sea level.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It depends on the length of the tunnel, the traffic in the tunnel, and various other requirements. Older tunnels the "walk away from the dead train" option was heavily used; but more often now they try to deal with "get away from the horribly burning dead train that will suffocate everyone".
Technotroll 3y ago
The tram line in Bergen was discontinued in 1965. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_Tramway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_Tramway
- lb1lf 3y ago
  -This would be an escape tunnel for the Bybanen, a light railway more comparable to the S-Bahn than a tram as such.

It's the escape tunnel for a tram tunnel with an extra coat of paint: https://www.lifeinnorway.net/bergen-cycle-tunnel/ https://www.lifeinnorway.net/bergen-cycle-tunnel/

cjrp 3y ago

> It will cost an additional NOK 500 million to upgrade the tunnel from an emergency service to one that can be used daily. $46M USD, to save cyclists 5.5km/20 minutes; that seems like a pretty good return.

sweettea 3y ago
Indeed, if we assume cyclists use the tunnel 100 days a year going both ways through it, thats saving each one nearly 60+ hours a year. If each one's time is worth $20, that is over a thousand dollars per cyclist per year - it only takes 9k cyclists to make the savings outweigh the costs in five years.
- elygre 3y ago
  And assuming that this will increase the number of people who choose to bike instead of to drive, you can also add savings for all the remaining drivers who get a slightly easier commute.
  - thecopy 3y ago
    And net reduced road maintenance and external costs coming for reduced car usage
  - cjrp 3y ago
    And a healthier society (on the whole) as people are encouraged to cycle. Less diabetes, etc.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      And a happier society as it's far more fun to cycle than to drive in traffic
- k4rli 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - patall 3y ago
    The calculation given is probably not right, but every european (and ideally world-wide) infrastructure project will have a cost to benefit analysis. Even if just to decide on which project to build next.
  - LudwigNagasena 3y ago
    It sounds very nice and morally fulfilling to denigrate any numerical calculus of welfare; but in the end you still have to deal with monetary budgets that represent limited societal supply of labor and resources. You may try to take a moral high ground and say that people are more important than $X million, but those money also represent potential housing, cancer treatment research, green energy investment, etc that won’t be financed. You cannot get away from measuring value of time and toil of people, at least implicitly. Why not then make it explicit and be mindful of it?
    - goodpoint 3y ago
      > It sounds very nice and morally fulfilling to denigrate any numerical calculus of welfare Many of those "numerical calculus" measure only savings in time, fuel, etc and attribute ZERO value to saving lives, improving quality of life and even improving mental health. Such calculations are not pragmatic, they are highly ideological.
      - dsfyu404ed 3y ago
        Ideologues everywhere use statistics as a pretext for their lies. Water is wet. More breaking news at 11.
        goodpoint 3y ago
        You are missing the point completely.
- aziaziazi 3y ago
  Why only 100d/y while Norwegian works around 190d/y? In my experience people tends to have a “main” commute mode that they only turn away from in exceptional cases. Easier to live with habits that mixing your timetables every other day.
  - MagnumOpus 3y ago
    People might use cars or public transport instead of a bike to commute if there is heavy rain or snow. This is an important consideration in Bergen which is notoriously the rainiest city in Europe (it rains more than half the time).
    - DeathArrow 3y ago
      So there are places in Europe where it rains more than in UK?
      - wartijn_ 3y ago
        Yes. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Albania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_precipitation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...
        arethuza 3y ago
        That's averages over the whole countries though - the north and west of the UK (particularly the Scottish Highlands and the Lake District) are a lot wetter than the south-east where London is. Also, "volume of rain" might be misleading because it doesn't give you a feeling for how often it rains. The Highlands in particular can have a light rain that falls for weeks at a time (or at least seems like it if you are in a tent).
        smugma 3y ago
        Most of the Bay Area gets about the same amount of rain as London. The key difference is that in Cupertino/Los Gators/Palo Alto it rains less often but with more intensity.
- goodpoint 3y ago
  Plus the health benefits of cycling and the ones of not being involved in driving accidents. Plus the saving in car TCO and fuel, plus less road maintenance.
InCityDreams 3y ago
Let's assume the saving of one life....
- rhn_mk1 3y ago
  Okay. Taking the 20min saved per ride from the article, and 300 rides that would otherwise take the longer route per day out of my ass, we get 100 hours saved per day. That's approximately 4 days saved per day. From https://www.fhi.no/en/op/hin/population/life-expectancy/ https://www.fhi.no/en/op/hin/population/life-expectancy/, life expectancy in Norway is about 82 years. Together, that means the tunnel will save one human life in about 20 years, not taking into account pedestrians, or indeed realistic usage numbers.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    300 users a day sounds improbably low for an urban route.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
> $46M USD, to save cyclists 5.5km/20 minutes; that seems like a pretty good return. That obviously depends on a lot of parameters, not least how many cyclists are impacted and how often.
ubercore 3y ago
And avoid 20 minutes of getting soaked in Bergen, also a plus.
altacc 3y ago
One of the factors other replies haven't considered is that Norway routinely spends a lot on transport infrastructure, with cost-benefit just one of the factors. This project was relatively cheap compared to the constant building of tunnels for cars that happens across the country. A typical project costs many times more than this. Per capita Norway is one of the highest spenders in the world, due to the size and low population density of the country. Even with all this spending, transport in some places, especially the north, is slow & inefficient. This has resulted in a high number of airports and Norwegians flying more than almost every other nationality.

skrebbel 3y ago

Smart move!

rob74 3y ago

Strange, I have never heard of a separate escape tunnel for a tram tunnel. Even German U-Bahn/S-Bahn (which I am most familiar with) tunnels usually just have a walkway beside the tracks that leads to the next station or emergency exit. But I guess that also depends on length between possible stations/exits, or it's due to newer regulations, or maybe it was a "mixed calculation" ("if we build a separate tunnel, it's more expensive, but it can also be used as a bike/pedestrian tunnel").

usrusr 3y ago
Subway tunnels usually aren't that far from the surface, even those that dive/rise between stops. So they just dot in a few emergency stairs to the surface if stops are too far apart. This tram tunnel however apparently is a shortcut through some mountain (because otherwise, the bike sibling wouldn't make much difference), so the emergency exit problem isn't easily solved by digging vertically.
doikor 3y ago
The problem here is similar to underwater tunnels. Making an emergency exit straight up is not possible or too expensive. In this case it is too expensive/unpractical as you would have to dig several hundred meters up a mountain. Also a tunnel going sideways is easier for those who can not walk. And this long stairs up could be a problem even to those who can walk. For those who don’t know the tunnels goes through a 477m high mountain/hill and both ends are roughly at sea level.
bombcar 3y ago
It depends on the length of the tunnel, the traffic in the tunnel, and various other requirements. Older tunnels the "walk away from the dead train" option was heavily used; but more often now they try to deal with "get away from the horribly burning dead train that will suffocate everyone".

Technotroll 3y ago

The tram line in Bergen was discontinued in 1965. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_Tramway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_Tramway

lb1lf 3y ago
-This would be an escape tunnel for the Bybanen, a light railway more comparable to the S-Bahn than a tram as such.