Written by Staff Writer
The revamped new Metro in Copenhagen is coming in hot from the cold. The subway, opened to the public at 8 p.m. Thursday night, was made just five months after floods devastated the city
Aching for nature, Danes are celebrating the new metro in the open air at Wuppertal’s Pariser Platz park
Enlarge Image Photo illustration by Macauley Marshall/CNN
The new metro is 350-miles long with 138 stations, costing 9.2 billion kroner ($1.5 billion). It promises better service, quicker journey times and more stylish offices and shops.
And there are also 250 art installations on the 3,400 meters of tunnels — they were sculpted by over 40 artists from across the world.
But a loud cat was blamed for the delay of the new metro, after a roar from the old one started emitting from ventilation units.
The commuter was fed up with living through monotony and the cat began a hot pursuit of noise from the tunnel. After the authorities realized they had missed the cat, the new metro project, designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels — the founder of BIG, a global architectural firm based in New York City — was shelved.
Under the 2015 floods, 520,000 metric tons of mud clogged up the buildings in town — also draining the railway for both the new and old metro lines.
Metro Respirator, a piece of art by Kai Meinrath and also the head designer of the Wuppertal metro, crouches in the urban jungle.
Enlarge Image Photo illustration by Macauley Marshall/CNN
“No art installation could be less relevant, but what’s important is we have had quite a big reparation project,” said Magnus Peterson, the architect who designed the new metro.
The 27-year-old — who has worked on landmarks such as London’s Shard and Sydney Opera House — said he didn’t like politics, so he was glad he wasn’t involved.
The former sea-faring city hopes to lift the city into the future, with new buildings designed by Danish companies such as Hella Koenig, sculptor of the new Bridge of Literature in Copenhagen.
The Danish government said over 190,000 people work in the capital but its future seems no less uncertain, with the investigation over the eruption of Mt. Thor looking set to continue.
But the capital is primed to take the lead in the 21st century, as it becomes one of the first Nordic countries to embrace driverless pods and carts to transport people around the city.
Valkyrie Transport Networks CEO Marius Drandblom said his team was developing pilot capsules in cooperation with the Swedish company Atlas Elektronik.
In the future, one of them will carry a human passenger and the other the necessary supplies, with the aim of testing it by 2020.
“There is no space in the public transport system. So if you want to attract people in the future, you need to have the public transport system for the future,” he said.