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Minister of Transportation,
Flemming Hansen |
| Courtesy Danish Foreign
Ministry |
The Transport Ministry sees itself as a company,
and a big one. They have 55,000 employees, the greatest
number in any ministry. They are responsible for
making sure that all Danes can get to where they
want to go. They oversee not just roads but rails,
sea, airspace, bridges, the postal service, weather
forecasts, and even auto safety inspections.
“We started some years ago to split all those
companies up, “ says Flemming Hansen, minister
of Transportation, “so they are not directly
linked to the ministry itself. Most of them are
owned 100 percent by us, but now the new government
has decided to sell 25 percent of the shares in
the next three years. Even the Social Democrats
accept that it’s the way for the future.”
It will be Minister Hansen’s unenviable task
to deal with all the political problems and issues
linked to that.
The Ministry of Transportation is one of the organizations
that say they will be very much affected by the
EU presidency.
“There’s no (point) discussing transport
in Europe without discussing all of us together.
Ten percent of all goods travel by railways. In
the U.S. it’s 40 percent. Why? Because Europeans
have had the railway system to protect their own
countries. There are so many barriers, including
language, technical problems, and different IT systems.
In Spain they have smaller tracks. The average speed
for good shipment by rail is 18 km per hour.”
“We had a test on the Øresund Bridge,”
says, Jesper Damm Olsen, press secretary. “In
Sweden, a green light means red.”
The Øresund Bridge, which was completed
in 2000 to connect Copenhagen with the Swedish city
of Malmo, is 15.9 kilometers long. Trains cross
it going 200 kilometers per hour, and the entire
journey takes less than an hour. “Because of
the Øresund Bridge,” says Hansen, “30,000
Swedes see Copenhagen as their new capital.”
Also, Swedish one-day tourism has shot up. Tourist
revenues are up an exhilarating DKK 20.6 million.
“And we must mention our other transportation
secret: Bicycles. About 160,000 Copenhageners go
by bike to work every day. That’s quite fantastic.”
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