www.lightrail.nl/kuehn - Aarhus

Aarhus, Denmark (2004-2005)

Aarhus County has been a partner within the Hitrans Interreg IIIb project (see below) and did approach Axel Kuehn in 2004 for additional, direct expert advice.

A first piece of work was for Aarhus municipality dealing with the advantages and disadvantages of street-running heavy rail solutions; background being the discussion about the existing waterfront railway from Aarhus to Grenaa and the question whether the "appearance" of this railway regarding urban quality could be changed within the "railway world", thus without conversion to light rail.

Following this study which raised some press coverage (see below) Axel Kuehn organised and guided a joint studytour for Aarhus Amt and Aarhus municipality which was also joined by Trafikstyrelsen (see below).

The impressions of the studytour, especially here the Kassel RegioTram project, together with the recommendations of the first report and supported by the discussions within Hitrans, resulted finally in a reshape of the Aarhus tramway project. The original tramway study of 2000 was more heading towards a pure tramway ("French style") in the central area and making use of existing railways did only play a role in the outer areas and only for later project phases. A new joint vision of city and county was made public in May 2005 and showed a new approach which made the waterfront railway an integral part of the scheme in the first stage and the project a real TramTrain project from the beginning.

A review of the new vision using the "50 TramTrain issues method" (see www.lightrail.nl/TramTrain) together with Rob van der Bijl (see www.lightrail.nl/rvdb) followed as a next piece of work in June-September 2005.

Axel Kuehn also delivered some minor advice regarding German regulations for level crossings road/rail and their handling in heavy rail and light rail/tramway environments.


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