High-speed rail in Norway from Oslo to Trondheim

That's the subject of an article here in Norwegian which goes over the (still quite low) possibility of a high-speed rail connection between the two cities. The main reason for the low probability for this is probably the fact that one doesn't even exist between the two largest cities of Oslo and Bergen (304 km) compared to 389 km between Oslo and Trondheim.


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First let's take a look at existing and planned high-speed rail in Norway:

Line name and end points	Length	Cost	Construction start	Completion
Gardermobanen: Oslo - Eidsvoll	67 km	$1.4 billion	1994	1999
Vestfoldbanen: Drammen - Sande	17 km	-	-	2001
Vestfoldbanen: Sande - Nykirke	14 km	$770 million	2011	2014
Vestfoldbanen: Barkåker - Tønsberg	8 km	$270 million	2009	2011
Vestfoldbanen: Larvik - Porsgrunn	23 km	$660 million	2011	2015
Dovrebanen: Eidsvoll - Stange	40 km	$1.2 billion	2011	-
Follobanen: Oslo - Ski	24 km	$2 billion	2013	2018

As you can see, not all that much at the moment. Now for other possible routes:

Route	Present airplane passengers daily	Present train passengers daily	Flying distance	Current distance by train
Oslo - Trondheim	4.400	1.300	390 km	550 km
Oslo - Bergen	4.500	1.900	300 km	530 km
Oslo - Stavanger	3.500	1.100	300 km	600 km
Oslo - Copenhagen	3.600	400	480 km	700 km
Oslo - Stockholm	2.900	500	420 km	540 km

And now a few parts from the article today in Norwegian:

A new high-speed rail route between Trondheim and Oslo will cost around 80 billion krone ($14.2 billion), a sum that the community would be unlikely to pay. According to Tore Sandvik in Sør-Trøndelag: "It is unthinkable that such an investment would happen without a route between Bergen and Oslo also being built. That would cost 180 billion ($32 billion). We have a huge investment in railways in the state budget this year, but that is just a fraction of what this line will cost."

The Norwegian parliament has approved a study taking a look at a line between the two large cities, in order to create a basis to make a decision in 2013.

The article also mentions that the line would probably be paid for over 30 years at an interest rate of five percent. In order to get the travel time between the two cities down to below four hours one would need a train with a speed of 160 kph, but the problem here is that the existing rail is a century old with a curve radius (not sure if that's the right term) of 300 metres, but this needs to be increased to 1200 metres to bring a train up to a speed of 160 kph. The high-speed rail envisioned between the two cities would have a speed of 300 kph.