The Vogelfluglinie (German) or Fugleflugtslinjen (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. [1]
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 (near Rostock) was included in the territory of East Germany. 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.
On 14 December 2019 at 20:02 the last train from DSB and Deutsche Bahn arrived in Rødbyhavn. Trains between Hamburg and Copenhagen will run via Funen and Jutland until the Fehmarnbelt connection is completed. [2] The rail ferry was discontinued because service would have been degraded massively while works on Sydbanen are ongoing.
The core of the connection is the 19-kilometre (12 mi) ferry link between Rødby (Denmark) and Puttgarden (Germany). The line is operated by Scandlines. Ferries take 45 minutes and operate twice an hour, 24 hours a day.
The projected Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link, an undersea tunnel, will replace the ferries. Danish-German negotiations on 29 June 2007 culminated in an agreement to complete the link by 2028, essentially on the basis of Danish funding.
The road connection consists of:
The rail connection consists of:
Until 2019, three to five EuroCity trains a day in each direction used train ferries to provide passenger services between Copenhagen and Hamburg, operated with DBAG Class 605 trains by Deutsche Bahn (out of service since 2017) and Danish IC3 trains. With the completion of the Great Belt Bridge freight trains are no longer directed via Rødby-Puttgarden, but via Funen and Jutland. Since the end of 2019, passenger trains have also used this route, which is 160 km (99 mi) longer but around 20 minutes faster and allows longer trains. [3] Only some of the IC3 trains were capable of going to Germany. [4]
These current bridges and tunnels are part of the connection:
The 'Railway axis Fehmarn Belt' is the Priority Project 20 of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) that seeks to establish a high-speed rail line Copenhagen–Hamburg, and which central section is the Fehmarn Belt Tunnel's railway. [5] In the north, it connects to the Øresund Bridge/Drogden Tunnel (Priority Project 11) and the Nordic Triangle railway/road axis (Priority Project 12), and in the south to Bremen and Hanover. [5] The full line currently under construction consists of several new railways to be built and old railways to be upgraded, to achieve at least a maximum speed of 200 km/h on all sections: [6]
Fehmarn is an island in the Baltic Sea, off the eastern coast of Germany's northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein. It is Germany's third-largest island, after Rügen and Usedom. Fehmarn is separated from the German peninsula of Wagria in Holstein by the Fehmarn Sound, and from the southern Danish island of Lolland by the Fehmarn Belt. It is connected to the Holsatian mainland by the Fehmarn Sound Bridge. The island belongs to the district of Ostholstein. The closest larger towns on the mainland are Heiligenhafen and Oldenburg in Holstein. Right opposite of Fehmarn, on the tip of the Wagrian Peninsula, is Großenbrode.
Falster is an island in south-eastern Denmark with an area of 486.2 km2 (187.7 sq mi) and 43,398 inhabitants as of 1 January 2010. Located in the Kattegat, Belts and Sound area, it is part of Region Zealand and is administered by Guldborgsund Municipality. Falster includes Denmark's southernmost point, Gedser Odde, near Gedser.
European route E47 is a road connecting Lübeck in Germany to Helsingborg in Sweden via the Danish capital, Copenhagen. It is also known as the Vogelfluglinie (German) or Fugleflugtslinjen (Danish). The road is of motorway standard all the way except for 28 km (17 mi) in Germany and 6 km of city roads in Helsingør; there are also two ferry connections.
Scandlines is a ferry company that operates the Rødby–Puttgarden and Gedser–Rostock ferry routes between Denmark and Germany.
Lolland Municipality is a kommune on the island of Lolland in the Region Sjælland of Denmark. According to Municipal And Regional Key Figures (www.noegletal.dk) it covers a total area of 885.40 km² and has a population of 39,921. The western part of Guldborgsund Municipality, the southernmost in Denmark, occupies the eastern part of the island (Østlolland).
Banedanmark is a Danish company that is responsible for the maintenance and traffic control on all of the state owned Danish railway network.
The Fehmarn Belt fixed link or Fehmarn Belt tunnel is an under-construction immersed tunnel, which will connect the Danish island of Lolland with the German island of Fehmarn, crossing the 18-kilometre-wide (11 mi) Fehmarn Belt in the Baltic Sea.
Großenbrode is a municipality in the district of Ostholstein, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is situated on the Baltic Sea coast, opposite Fehmarn, approx. 8 km (5 mi) east of Heiligenhafen. Until 1963 it had a ferry connection to Gedser in Denmark. After World War II there was no ferry connection from West Germany to Denmark - the ferry port Warnemünde now being in the communist east. Großenbrode was chosen as the site for a temporary ferry connection for the 3 hour crossing to Gedser. After the Fehmarnsund bridge was built in 1963, the ferryport moved to Puttgarden on Fehmarn. Großenbrode is planned to be the site of a portal of the Fehmarn Sound Tunnel by 2028.
is a ferry harbour and a village on the German island of Fehmarn. It lies on an important route between Germany and Denmark known as the Vogelfluglinie which crosses the 18 kilometres (11 mi) strait, the Fehmarnbelt, to Rødby on the island of Lolland.
Construction of the first high-speed rail in Germany began shortly after that of the French LGVs. However, legal battles caused significant delays, so that the German Intercity-Express (ICE) trains were deployed ten years after the TGV network was established. Germany has around 1,658 kilometers of high speed lines.
The Gedser-Rostock bridge was a proposed project that would have linked the Danish island Falster with Rostock in Germany. The 45 km (28 mi) route across the Baltic Sea would have been part of European route E55 and the main link between Scandinavia and Berlin. It was rejected in 2007 in favour of the Fehmarn Belt tunnel, which finally began construction in 2021.
The Fehmarn Sound Bridge connects the German island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea with the German mainland near Großenbrode.
Rødbyhavn is a small town and harbour on the south coast of Lolland, Denmark, with a population of 1,549. Since 2007 it has been a part of Lolland Municipality.
Lolland is the fourth largest island of Denmark, with an area of 1,243 km2 (480 sq mi). Located in the Kattegat, Belts and Sund area, it is part of Region Sjælland. As of 1 January 2022, it has 57,618 inhabitants. Lolland is closely connected to the island of Falster to its east. The locality of Sundby forms a cross-island urban area with Nykøbing Falster, the largest conurbation partially on Lolland. The most populated settlement on Lolland proper is Nakskov.
The Hamburg–Lübeck railway is one of the most important mainline railways of the German states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg. It connects the two Hanseatic cities of Hamburg and Lübeck, and is part of the line to Denmark. The line was opened in 1865.
The Lübeck–Puttgarden railway is part of the international Vogelfluglinie between Germany and Denmark and connects Lübeck with Puttgarden on the Baltic Sea island of Fehmarn in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The line is now closed north of Neustadt for the construction of the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link.
Puttgarden station is a major ferry terminal on the Vogelfluglinie on the island of Fehmarn in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. It lies between the town of Puttgarden and Marienleuchte.
The first high-speed railway in Denmark was the Copenhagen–Ringsted Line, completed in late 2018 and opened in 2019. Further high-speed lines are currently under planning.
The Merkur was an international express train linking Copenhagen, the Danish capital, with Germany. The train was named after the Roman God Mercury, the God of traders and travellers.
The South Line is a government-owned railway line in Denmark. Technically, the line connects Ringsted with Nykøbing Falster, from which it branches to Gedser and Rødbyhavn. In practice, Ringsted is not the terminal station, so the line is often said to continue to Copenhagen.
Media related to Fugleflugtslinjen at Wikimedia Commons| Authority control databases: National |
|---|
