Copenhagen Opens New City Ring Metro Line

There are already so many things Danish person can brag about: cutting-edge cuisine, beautiful skin, inventing hygge and Lego toys, unparalleled infrastructure, a year of paid maternity leave. In case it wasn’t enough, the Scandinavian nation earned another bragging right this fall, a crown jewel in that infrastructure: Copenhagen opened a new metro line circling the city center, making it even easier for residents (and ahem, bumbling American tourists) to get where they’re going. The fully automatic, driver-less trains arrive every 90 seconds.

After eight years of construction, during which the city’s main landmarks, squares, and coolest buildings were often covered or boarded over, 17 of stations debuted at once on September 29, 2019. Now, a perfect circle (or at least, that’s how it magically appears on the metro map) lies under the city of 600,000 residents. The Cityringen project was estimated to cost $3.2 billion.

“The construction of the M3 Cityringen Metro line is the largest construction project in Copenhagen since Christian IV, a famous Danish king, built the area of Christianshavn, a neighborhood built on a small island inside the harbor,” says Kåre Møller Madsen, a spokesperson for the metro. For those not up on their Danish history, that means the new metro line represents Denmark’s biggest public work in 400 years.

Each station features walls of ceramic, glass, brick, or slate paneling in a color scheme inspired by the neighborhood around it—say, sandstone panels in one that mimic the exteriors of that area’s homes, or white tiles outlined in happy primary colors near a park. The stations offer double the elevators of stations on the M1 and M2 lines, with stairs at a lower incline to make them easier to climb. Natural light floods through entirely open expanses from the street above, and there are glass safety barricades to protect passengers from falling on the tracks.

“The architects’ vision for the stations was to try to bring the local surrounding areas into the look of the underground stations,” says Madsen. “For instance, the Frederiksberg Allé station is green, as a reference to the trees on the beautiful avenue above. Enghave Plads station has red bricks on the walls, as a reference to many of the red brick buildings above.”

The metro system asked residents on social media to vote for their favorite stop so far, and the winner was Aksel Møllers Have, which features handmade cafe au lait-colored brick walls. Some were glazed diagonally to create a subtle pattern throughout the station.

Oh, and the stations don’t have turnstiles, only check-in points near entrances and exists and on the platform, which allow for a sort of honor system that might feel especially culturally shocking for those of us on the other side of the great pond.

While the Cityringen is open, there are still more developments ahead for the city, as two stations on a new M4 line are slotted to debut in the first quarter of 2020, with another five stations coming by 2024. The breakneck pace is, again, particularly brutal to grasp for New Yorkers, who waited 97 years and paid $4.5 billion to get four new stations in 2017.

If alternately gawking at and bemoaning Danish ingenuity isn’t enough of a reason to book a trip to Copenhagen right now (what, not a transportation buff?), consider that with the majority of construction cleared away, the city’s best tourism sites, including the Marble Church, the royal residence at Amalienborg, and the amusement park Tivoli Gardens are finally unobstructed and easily navigable. For example, the city’s largest plaza, Kongens Nytorv (or King’s Square), now provides unobstructed views and connections to the city’s famous harbor, the Royal Danish Theater, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and the city’s grand dame Hotel D’Angleterre (itself spiffed up in 2013).

2020 brings the 80th birthday of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II, which should make for a royal celebration in the streets come April. The eight-day music festival Roskilde turns 50, and headliner Taylor Swift will be in town to celebrate the milestone. And Carlsberg beer is getting a major new museum and visitor center midway through the year, for those who associate Denmark with kelly green cans.

Also, Norwegian Air flies nonstop to Copenhagen every day from four American cities, including New York and L.A., with one-way flights starting at $196 in economy and $523 in premium class.

Just one more statistic about that metro: more than 99 percent of the trains run on time. We know, Copenhagen, we know.