Last year in March, M.J. Eriksson the tender, and already in April work began on building the 30 kilometres of railway from Nykøbing to Rødby, where Femern A/S takes over the responsibility for the last kilometres up to the tunnel portal.
– I just have to praise our contractor. Despite a lack of labour and many other large projects in the area – and despite challenging weather, they keep to the schedule, praised the project manager for the Ringsted-Femern Railway at Banedanmark, Jens Aalund.
Problems with the schedule
But for Lolland Municipality, the timetable is actually the problem itself. Mayor Holger Schou Rasmussen (S) had expectations that did not quite agree with Banedanmark’s. The mayor wants fast commuter trains to his municipality – and before a fixed connection is established to Germany:
– I find it appropiate to state that it is extremely important for Lolland that the new track can be put into use as soon as it is finished, he said, and continued:
Don’t want to wait until 2029
– It is planned that the new track and station will be completed within the next few years, and then it will also be in use … not before 2029, the mayor stated with a clear address to Banedanmark and Christiansborg.
But Banedanmark’s project manager Jens Aalund quickly threw up a timetable on PowerPoint that punctured that dream.
Station complete – but not rails and electricity
According to the plan, the new station “Lolland” will probably be completed already this year. But only in 2024 will the rails be laid, and only towards 2028 will the electrification and signals be installed so that the railway can open in 2029 … when the tunnel opens.
Filthy and noisy
The neighbours of the construction site were not equally enthusiastic about the project either. The neighbours have already noticed how dirty and noisy it is to be a neighbour to such a large construction project – especially when extreme amounts of soil have to be moved to and from the construction site.
– Will Banedanmark re-establish the roads that are destroyed due to violent driving? Højbygårdvej is completely destroyed. The roadsides have run down, and the discounts have run up, said Torsten Elsvor, who is one of the building’s closest neighbours at Tågerup.
Damage cannot be avoided
– It is a dialogue that Banedanmark has with Lolland Municipality so that we can get some of the damage repaired. We have selected the better roads to drive on, but we must recognize that we cannot avoid damaging them, said project manager Jens Aalund, who in his speech at the meeting acknowledged that there has been very heavy traffic on Højbygårdvej, which has caused some unrest among the neighbours.
– The municipality does what it can to drive and patch it up. But it can’t be right that our municipal tax dollars should go to that either. It must be Banedanmark that has to pay for it? Elsvor asked.
Expect the one to do the damage to pay
In the hall, Lolland Municipality’s municipal manager Thomas Knudsen also listened.
– I have an expectation that the perpetrator of the damage will pay, he said quietly, when the newspaper asked about the “dialogue” the municipality has with Banedanmark about the road damage after the construction.
