Classic Scandinavian design and Attractive urban surroundings were Among the visionary pillars for the world’s first driverless metro located in Copenhagen.

Every hour, every day people spend billion of hours waiting in traffic jams around the world. The problem is set to accelerate as cities are growing dramatically. 

In 2050, around 70 percent of the world’s 10 billion people are expected to live in a city. 

The people flow to the world’s cities puts pressure on the existing infrastructure, and in the mid 1990ies, Danish authorities decided to build a metro in the capital of Copenhagen to prepare for the city’s growth and kick-start the development of a new urban area, the Ørestad district.  

Sensors kept an eye on landmark buildings

Sensors on the walls of the surrounding buildings and meticulous computer monitoring around the construction sites of the inner city metro stations were witnesses to the technical challenges related to shallow tunneling under large buildings and monuments – some of them being several hundred years old.

The Frederiks Church, popularly known as 'The Marble Church', is a landmark church located in line with Amalienborg royal castle and The Opera in the middle of the elegant area of Frederiksstaden. The church is known for its characteristic copper green dome and has a foundation reaching back to 1749.

Here, a few meters from the main entrance, the new metro station is now open.

”We had to take extremely good care and be aware of the risk to cause cracks and settlements in the buildings on the ground. To mitigate this risk, we established a monitoring system and an alarm would have gone off, if any settlements occured."

"In some cases, we also established a system with pipes under the constructions, which made it possible to lift the buildings if necessary,” explains Torsten Mølgaard, senior project director at COWI.

We had to take extremely good care and be aware of the risk to cause cracks and settlements in buildings on the ground.

Torsten Mølgaard Senior Project Director, COWI

DRILLED AND BUILT ON TRUST

Establishing stations 30-40 meters underground and squeezing them in between fragile Medieval buildings did not come easy. Due to the sensitivity and minimal available space in the city center, Marmorkirken Station doesn’t follow the traditional Copenhagen Metro design with two tracks running side by side. Instead, it was decided to build a station with two floors. This makes it the deepest of all stations, with a depth of nearly 40 meters.

Torsten Mølgaard elaborates on COWI's role in the extensive metro project:

”The keyword is trust. First and foremost that the client trusts in you, but also that the society trusts in you. A large project like this has a strong focus from the local citizens and from the political system. At Marmorkirken Station, for example, a crucial task was to evaluate whether it was safe to build a station in the underground, and obviously we were very careful to deliver a well-documented answer, before any drilling work was allowed.”

EACH STATION DESIGNED TO MIRROR THE NEIGHBORHOOD

The green line opened up to passengers in 2002, the yellow line in 2007 and the City Circle Line (blue and red lines) with 17 new stations each the size of a handball court, are now open. This has brought up the number of stations to a total of 39.

The City Circle is the largest construction project in Copenhagen in 400 years.

It is entirely underground and a solid pillar of the metro design is to ensure daylight into the platforms and generally choosing solutions to support the Danish capital’s vision to uphold and further develop a livable city with green and vibrant public spaces.

The Copenhagen Metro is driverless and fully automatic. By conclusion, it is expected to carry more than 100 million passengers a year.

COWI's services on THE CITY CIRCLE Line 

• Station design (civil works and architecture)
• Areas and rights
• Utility relocation
• Alignment and tunnel design 
• Environmental aspects incl. Environmental lmpact Assessment (ElA)
• Construction programming
• BoQ and cost estimates
• Geotechnical, geological and hydrological surveys and investigations 
• Preparation and interpretation of seismic investigations
• Requirements regarding operation and maintenance
• Advice regarding authority approval, building registration, construction risk assessment.