Norwegian Government Wishes to Explore Extending Railway to Tromsø

 
The Government and its supporting parties wish to explore extending the North Norwegian Railway from Fauske to Tromsø, with a side-track to Harstad, according to NRK - the state owned Norwegian broadcaster.

 - We are talking about transportation across vast distances, and of significant amounts of goods in an area with lots of weather, Morten Skandfer (Liberals) says to the broadcaster. (Norwegian only)

According to a leak from the National Transportation Plan, an extension running from Fauske to Tromsø, with an extension track from Narvik through Evenes to Harstad, should be explored. In addition to this, the parties also want to consider the opportunity of building a railway line between Kirkenes in Northern Norway and Rovaniemi in Finland.

It was only six years ago that Bane NOR (the state-owned company responsible for the Norwegian national railway infrastructure) presented an analysis concluding that money should rather be spent on upgrading the Ofoten Railway from Narvik to the Swedish border, and that it would not be viable from a transport-economic point of view to keep working on what was referred to as the Troms Railway.

The Labor Party’s MP Martin Henriksen from Troms praises the supporting parties Liberals and the Christian Democratic Party for going all-in in the negotiations with the government parties. Everything now indicates that there will be a majority of votes in the Parliament to support exploring an extension of the North Norwegian Railway.