The German and part of the Danish railway line
Ferry at Puttgarden. Trains and cars are loaded by the lower ramp, cars only by the upper ramp.
The
(German) or
(Danish) is a
transport corridor between
Copenhagen,
Denmark, and
Hamburg,
Germany.
As the Danish and German names (literally:
bird flight line) imply, the corridor is also an important bird migration route between
arctic Scandinavia and
Central Europe.
Ferry link
The core of the connection is the ferry link between
Rødby (Denmark) and
Puttgarden (Germany). The line is operated by the jointly Danish and German state-owned
Scandlines. Ferries take 45 minutes and operate twice an hour, 24 hours a day. The ships act as
car and
train ferry simultaneously.
The projected
Fehmarn Belt bridge will eventually replace the ferries. Danish-German negotiations on
June 29,
2007 culminated in an agreement to complete the bridge by 2018, essentially on the basis of Danish funding.
Landside connections
The road connection consists of:
- Autobahn A1 (European routes E 47 and E22) on the German side, and the two-lane Bundesstraße 207/E 47 on the northernmost section. An additional of motorway will be completed by 2008, still leaving the last a two-lane road.
The rail connection consists of:
Passenger services between Copenhagen and Hamburg number three to five
EuroCitys a day in each direction, operated with
DBAG Class 605 trains of
Deutsche Bahn and Danish
IC3 trains. Since completion of the
Great Belt Bridge freight trains are not directed via Rødby-Puttgarden any more, but via
Funen and
Jutland which is longer. Same applies to the
CityNightLine train between Copenhagen and
Munich/
Dortmund/
Basel/
Amsterdam.
These current bridges and tunnels are part of the connection:
- Guldborgsund Tunnel, Denmark (motorway extension opened in late 2007)
History
Proposals for a more direct "bird flight line" date back from the 1920s. Construction was started on the Danish side in 1941 after the
Nazi occupation force pushed the matter, but work was halted again in 1946. After
World War II, Warnemünde was included in
East Germany territory. Political divisions made traffic between Denmark and
West Germany via Warnemünde inconvenient.
From 1951 to 1963 a ferry line from
Gedser to
Großenbrode operated as a temporary solution. In addition, traffic between Copenhagen and Hamburg would either be directed over the
Great Belt ferry,
Funen and
Jutland or the
Gedser-
Warnemünde ferry. Construction of the "bird flight line" was restarted in 1949 and completed in 1963.
Beeline in pictures
Image:Scandlines Prinsesse Benedikte.jpg|M/S Prinsesse Benedikte, one of the ferries
Image:DSB IC3.jpg|A Danish IC3 train in Hamburg Central Station
Image:First ICE in Flensburg DSC 6836.JPG|The ICE-TD/type 605 is now used on the Vogelfluglinie
Image:Storstrøm over harbour.jpg|Storstrøm Bridge
Image:Faro south bridge pylons.jpg|Farø Bridges
Image:Fehmarnsundbr%C3%BCcke.JPG|Fehmarn Sound BridgeSee also
