page_title: Øresund Bridge
section_title: Costs and benefits
hierarchical_section_title: Øresund Bridge / Costs and benefits
caption_attribution_description: Øresund bridge Author: Väsk
context_page_description: The Öresund or Øresund Bridge is a combined railway and motorway bridge across the Öresund strait between Sweden and Denmark. The bridge runs nearly 8 kilometres from the Swedish coast to the artificial island Peberholm in the middle of the strait. The crossing is completed by the 4-kilometre Drogden Tunnel from Peberholm to the Danish island of Amager.
  The Øresund Bridge was the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe from 2000 to 2019, and connects two major metropolitan areas: Copenhagen, the Danish capital city, and the Swedish city of Malmö. It connects the road and rail networks of the Scandinavian Peninsula with those of Central and Western Europe. A data cable also makes the bridge the backbone of internet data transmission between central Europe and Sweden.
  The international European route E20 crosses via road, the Øresund Line via railway. The construction of the Great Belt Fixed Link, connecting Zealand to Funen and thence to the Jutland Peninsula, and the Øresund Bridge have connected Central and Western Europe to Sweden by road and rail.
  The Øresund Bridge was designed by the Danish engineering firm COWI.
context_section_description: The cost for the Øresund Connection, including motorway and railway connections on land, was DKK 30.1 billion (~€4.0 billion) according to the 2000 year price index, with the cost of the bridge expected in 2003 to be recouped by 2037. In 2006, Sweden began work on the Malmö City Tunnel, a SEK 9.45 billion connection with the bridge that was completed in December 2010.
  The connection will be entirely user-financed. The owner company is owned half by the Danish state and half by the Swedish state. This owner company has taken loans guaranteed by the governments to finance the connection and the user fees are its only income. After the increase in traffic, these fees are enough to pay the interest and begin repaying the loans, which is expected to take about 30 years.
  Taxpayers have paid for neither the bridge nor the tunnel, but tax money has been used for the land connections. On the Danish side, the land connection has domestic benefits, mainly to connect the airport to the railway network. The Malmö City Tunnel has the benefit of connecting the southern part of the inner city to the rail network and allowing many more trains to and from Malmö.
  According to The Öresund Committee, the bridge has made a national economic gain of DKK 57 billion, or SEK 78 billion SEK (~€8.41 billion) on both sides of the strait by increased commuting and lower commuting expense.  The gain is estimated to be SEK 6.5 billion per year but this could be increased to 7.7 billion by removing the three biggest obstacles to integration and mobility, the two largest being that non-EU nationals in Sweden are not allowed to work in Denmark and that many professional qualifications and merits are not mutually recognised.
caption: On the bridge
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