THE TRAIN FUND

The Danish Government has big plans for its rail network; around kr.28.5 billion of them. This is the amount it is expected to cost over the next 10-20 years to upgrade rail infrastructure and get people to leave their cars at home.

The core of the proposal is the so-called "hour plan", under which it will take a maximum of an hour to travel between the country's five biggest cities; Copenhagen to Odense, Odense to Esbjerg and Århus, and Århus to Aalborg. That will require new tracks, electrification of existing tracks on Jutland, and a new rail bridge over the Vejle Fjord. There will also be improvements to regional services, and a rail connection to Billund Airport, the country's second busiest, which currently sits in the middle of nowhere in central Jutland, and is very difficult to get to by public transport.

This large slug of cash will come from earmarking additional taxes on North Sea oil production. Experts are divided as to whether these additional taxes will deter investment in what are now increasingly marginal fields, which is why the right-wing opposition parties are not part of the deal. The very right-wing Danish People's Party, on the other hand, is part of the agreement. Even though it is also against extra taxes, it is increasingly championing the cause of "udkants Danmark" (Denmark out in the sticks), which needs better public transport links if there is to be any chance at all of halting the general drift away from the countryside to the major cities. And the Parliamentary constituency of its leader Christian Thulesen Dahl is very close to Billund, which is surely a factor.

Much can still go wrong. Those taxes might not materialise, and then what? And the fund covers only infrastructure, not new trains. Denmark's main rail operator DSB is still digesting the fiasco of its IC4 trains, ordered way back in 2000 to be the next generation workhorses around about today. If and when that new rail infrastructure comes on stream, DSB will be needing IC5 or 6 trains to carry all of those extra non-motorists. Let's hope they do a better job of procuring them than last time.

Walter Blotscher