The Small Nordic City Where LRT Actually Works

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Bybanen is great, but it is also the most hotly debated political issue in Bergen over the past decades. It has made and broken several city governments. This could be worth a video of its own since it illustrates the particularly sanguine mentality of Bergeners and their strong emotions about their city.

As a dutchman who lives in Bergen, the Bybanen feels like a bicyclepath on steroids. It never has to yield and there's almost always a stop nearby. Even though some bus routes are quicker than the bybanen, the bybanen will get you to the city centre quickly and reliably, and they run so often you don't really need to check the timetable.

What Alberta could have had if they’d been smart with their oil money. 😔

As someone from Bergen it is so fun to hear you call Bergen a small city bc even though it absolutely is by international standards, it is the second biggest city in Norway and considered quite big, and therefore it is kind of expected that we have a good system for public transport.

Fun fact about this system is that it has an unusually large underground station at Arstad, which is almost 30m deep

As a Norwegian that moved from a little village in Vestland to Bergen ~8 months ago, I was honestly shocked at just how... good it felt to travel around the city, both as a pedestrian and by taking the public transport. I've kinda taken it for granted now, but you have truly showed me just how lucky we are to have this kind of stuff in Bergen!

Thank you, Reece! Bergen finally got it’s deserving video. This was needed in the current time when the extensions to Bybanen is hanging in the air. It’s a system that gave inspiration to Aarhus and Odense in Denmark and Lund in Sweden. But now it’s time for Bybanen to travel north to Åsane and west to Lakesevåg once and for all.

As someone living in Trondheim, I look at this system with great envy. I think any medium sized city should have a good light rail system, it really takes the public transport from being something "nice to have" to being an integral part of the city's transport system, as well as a large part of its identity. By the way, would you like to have a look at Trondheim one day? It only has a single light rail line (Gråkallbanen, the northernmost tram in the world, the only remaining part of the historic Trondheim tramway), but it recently got a quite nice metrobus system with double articulated Van Hool buses. Also, there are plans to one day build a north south light rail line as well as extending Gråkallbanen to the main station.

I just got back to the US after studying for a semester in Bergen. Bybanen was SO convenient to get around the city, especially when paired with the frequent bus service. It's one of the things I miss the most.

Great video, Tampere - Finland (a city of similar size) has also built a tram network which has been a massive success and they are planning to extend it even further.

Having a unique jingle for each station is such a nice touch, it makes the trip way more pleasant! It is actually very common in cities in France (Paris T3, Tours, Strasbourg…) which take it even farther. In Nice for example, each stop has a set of jingles (with sound effects like wave sounds for the beach or crowd noises for the central plaza…) and announcement voices (from residents or celebrities from the area the stop is located in – in French, Occitan (the local language), Italian & English) that plays randomly each time. And it changes depending on the time of the day/night, the season or during special occasions like public holidays, and new ones are added each year, so it’s literally different each time! My favorite is Mado la Niçoise (a famous French comedian from the city) making jokes every saturday afternoon. Another example that I love: Brittany has a strong maritime culture and the highest tides in Europe, so naturally, the announcements on the Brest tramway are masculine voices during low tide and feminine voices during high tide! (And of course in French, Breton (the local language) and English) The French really have a knack for design! I think every city should have something similar, it’s a great way to make the residents feel more part of the transit they use by having them as voice announcers!

IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE, as someone with family from Bergen, I’ve been on every inch of this system multiple times, and I would kill for a system like this in other places, specifically in the Us

Yep, there is not much to say: It's great. We've been there last year and getting from our AirBnb to the center was no issue at all. Coming from Germany, I am used to light rail - but this one is fast, clean and convenient. Well done Bergen, well done.

Don't forget Bergen's trolleybuses! It opened in February 1950 as the Bergen Tramway was gradually closed and some of the tram lines were converted to two trolleybus lines, but today, only one trolleybus line remains, and it's the last trolleybus operation in Norway. The fuel shortage during World War II made trolleybuses extremely popular, since Norway had an abundance of cheap electricity, so the trolleybus system was approved by the city council in 1940. Through the 1970s, Bergen Sporvei (who used to operate the trolleybuses) tried to end trolleybus operation, but the city council would not allow that However, in 1995, there was major road works which resulted in the closure of line 5. According to tradition, Bergen was founded in 1070 by King Olav Kyrre and was named Bjørgvin or "the green meadow among the mountains". It served as Norway's capital in the 13th century, and from the end of the 13th century became a bureau city of the Hanseatic League. In 1299, King Håkon V decided to move from Bergen to Ánslo, now known as Oslo. Until 1789, Bergen enjoyed exclusive rights to mediate trade between Northern Norway and abroad, and it was the largest city in Norway until the 1830s when it was overtaken by Christiania, another name Oslo was once known as (it was renamed after King Christian IV after he built a new city due to a fire in 1624; renamed to Oslo in 1925).

The cyceling and walking tunnel to Fyllingsdalen is one of the best pedestrian infrastructure projects in Norways history. Previously, getting from Fyllingsdalen to the Minde side of the mountain, would take 40-50 minutes, and crossing a 300m mountain. In reality not practical for most people. Now, you can cycle between the two most populous parts of the city in 10 minutes. It's amazing.

The main drawback is the slow speed compared to alternative modes of transport. It is nice for shorter distances, but that's it.

As a Bergen resident: Yes, it's amazing. :) Our city council sucks ass and barely manage to build and extend it at 5% of the speed they should be, but it's growing and it's just making everything better.

Great that you made it to Bergen. Yes, Bybanen is just fantastic, but still many people are against it, because they love their cars. And you forgot to mention that Bybanen has it's own art-program connected to it, with jingles for stations as part of it. I mention this because I have been responsible for managing the art-program 😂! Greetings from Bergen.

What I also like about the Bybanen is the huge amount of TOD along the line. Before I went to Bergen, I saw a cab ride of Line 1 shortly before its opening in 2010. I thought "Well, that's a nice rural line serving some quiet suburbs." When I first went to Bergen in 2022, I was impressed by all the medium and high-density development along the line, as I could not recognise the line compared to what I previously saw in the video.