 I have made a lot of videos complimenting small European cities on their impressive transit networks, frequently annoying locals who insist that cities with 2 million plus people should never be called small, and they're probably right. But the topic city of today's video is truly comparatively small, with its impressively extensive metro network, given it has only around a million people or arguably less living in it, and that's Oslo and Norway. And some claim it has the most metro per capita in the world, depending on how you define metro, which is my kind of city. So let's take a look. All transit explained videos naturally need to start with showing you around the city we're talking about, and since this is Norway, naturally Oslo is located at the end of a fjord, known creatively as the Oslo Fjord. Here is the city centre of Oslo, which includes major ferry docks, the Norwegian Parliament, and the Royal Palace. To the east of the city centre we have the central station, which is surrounded by development on all sides, and has a number of surface terminating platforms, as well as connections through to a cross city tunnel known as the Oslo Tunnel. Again, creative names. The existence of this tunnel is really impressive, again given Oslo's size. As it turns out, Norway's busiest station is Oslo Central, and the second busiest is National Theatre, the only station within the Oslo Tunnel. To the south of the central station are a number of new development areas, and the famously modern Oslo Opera House. Zooming out, Oslo spreads out in all directions, but development is constrained by mountains which hem in the city on most sides, as well as numerous watercourses from lakes to rivers and the Oslo Fjord. Now this video is all about the Metro of Oslo, so let's get talking about that. I should say that the Metro is locally known as the T-Bahn or T-Bahn, and the Metro signs feature a T, which is for similar reasons to the T-Bahn in Stockholm, a system that has a decent amount in common with Oslo, and that you should definitely check out in my video in the top right corner. Like many other cities such as Stockholm, Oslo's rapid transit system started with trans, which made their reign to tunnels, and over the decades those tunnels were upgraded and came together to form the central tunnel of the Oslo Metro. The central tunnel is still a critical part of the Metro network, with all five services running through it. The tunnel also features a particularly strange and long gap between National Theatre and Majorstuen, a distance of almost 2 km through the center of the city. In the gap, a former and now abandoned station exists, and there have long been discussions about building a new infill station here. Like in Say Valencia, there was a long period of time where the Metro was isolated in two separate systems, because trains could not travel across the center. As you've probably figured, Oslo is very much not in the Toronto or Paris School of Rapid Transit Network design, and thus has many branches which feed the central tunnel. Let's talk about those based on the services that operate. The one service starts way up at the top of a mountain, just about a km walk from a ski hill. Yes, you can take the Metro to go skiing, and then winds its way down into Oslo. And when I say wind, I mean it. Despite this, it's actually double tracked right to the end of the line, which is something that isn't true of the Metro of Valencia or even Vancouver's Canada line, but is true of all of Oslo's Metro lines. This line in particular is easily one of the most scenic and beautiful pieces of Metro infrastructure in the world. You can also see the line's tram origins, as there are level crossings, quite a few of them actually, and even tram style staggered stops, despite the third rail power used across the system these days. The line also has something in common with the Paris Metro, a one-directional station, albeit not as interesting because it isn't underground. As the line comes into central Oslo, it meets with the other tracks from the north and southwest, in a series of two flying junctions. Hilariously though, there is still a grade crossing less than a kilometer away to the west. All of these grade crossings are again because this system originally operated trams, and a lot of the alignments are directly adjacent to roadways just as it would have been on a tram system. From here, the one service continues through Maiorstuin and the city center tunnel, and then beyond past Toyen and Hellsphere, where most services terminate, with the limited service continuing that we will come back to. The two service starts west of the city center, where it runs on a mostly above ground alignment with basic stations, but full grade separation, before arriving at the city center and combining with the one just west of Maiorstuin. After passing through the central tunnel, the line continues beyond Toyen and Hellsphere, before turning to the northeast and serving a number of dense housing developments on the mountain slope on an increasingly tunneled alignment, which is thus fully grade separated. The three service starts roughly 14 kilometers southwest of central Oslo. The furthest any of the metro lines travels from the city center. This section of the line previously had a number of grade crossings, not unlike the western half of the one service, but the line was upgraded to rebuild the alignment, remove grade crossings, and extend platforms about 10 years ago. The line winds its way to Bekastua, where things get quite interesting, as the island platform also features a cutout at its end to accommodate suburban trams from Oslo's tram system, a nice reminder of the origins of the metro. As it turns out, this section of metro line is shared between the adorable little Oslo trams and big Oslo metro trains, which, thanks to the heavy branching of the network, leave sufficient space between them to accommodate the trams. East of Bekastua, at rings to Bek, metro trains stop but trams bypass the station. Slightly further east at Yar, the trams do stop with separate platforms off the metro main line, adjacent to the main Yar platforms that allow trams to be bypassed as necessary. A little further to the east, still, and a fly under exists alongside another curve of track, allowing trams to enter the right of way without blocking metro trains. From here, the services continue northeast, before uniting with the two service, just west of Smerstad station, and then traveling into and through the center of Oslo with the tunnel. The three remains together with the two service, until just east of Heligrut station, before turning south on a mixed alignment that begins above ground, but grows increasingly tunneled as it travels along the mountainside akin to the two to the north. The four service starts just about two kilometers north of the eastern terminus of the three, or one kilometer west of the services second to last station, where an extension is really begging to be made. This section of the four, which winds its way north on a nearly entirely above ground alignment, is shared with some limited one services east of Hellsphere. After passing through the central tunnel, the four turns north and then northeast on an above ground alignment to the national stadium, before diving underground and heading due east to the comparatively dense neighborhood of Niedelen. From here, the line runs south and then east and north, coming tantalizingly close to the metro corridor east of the central tunnel, nearly forming a loop, before running northeast on a mostly above ground alignment that grows increasingly tunneled all the way to the city limits. The final service on the system is the super weird five, which proves humanity's desire to have metro loops wherever possible. The five service starts in the northeast with the four and runs all the way south toward the city center, before diverging to connect across to the other metro lines just east of Toyan, after passing through Carl Burners Plus. From here, the five goes through the central tunnel, all the way north and back around to Carl Burners Plus, this time from the north rather than the east, before running once again through the central tunnel. After passing by the national stadium a second time, the five service diverges to the north on an entirely above ground alignment to Songshan, a station less than half a kilometer south of the shore of the beautiful lake of the same name. Now, as I alluded to before, Oslo has big metro trains, which is again surprising because Oslo is not a big city. And usually if a small city does have a metro, it's definitely a light metro, which Oslo's roughly 110 meter long, 3.2 meter wide trains, wide enough to accommodate transverse 3.2 seating arrangement are not. These are not unlike the metro trains seen in Helsinki, and just like them feature bottom contact third rail. To be fair, not every service runs full length train, as the one for example, cannot accommodate them with its short platforms, but this is still really impressive. And Oslo's older trains, which were also dual power, again connecting back to the system's tram origins, were even wider at 3.3 meters. As it turns out, Oslo's new MX3000 stock, which has been in use since the 2000s, make up the entire fleet, and are closely related to the V-Sets in Vienna, a system you can learn more about in a previous explainer. They were also designed by Porsche and built by Siemens. Given Norway is known to be a country with no shortage of money and a penchant for mega projects, especially tunnels, you'd probably expect Oslo was going full Stockholm or even Paris and massively expanding its metro. But that's not really the case. And again, let's be fair, Oslo already has a really big metro system given its size. And so the metro actually only has one major project currently under construction. That would be the new Fornebu line, which is a new fully underground line from just west of Majorstuen to the peninsula of Fornebu via Skvian and Liseker, which are both major rail stations. Now the history of this peninsula, which is absolutely booming with development from major offices for companies like Equinor, Norway's national oil company, previously known as Statoil, as well as Telenoor, ABB and Accenture, as well as the major new Telenoor arena, which will have a stop on the line. The land here was freed up in the late 1990s when Oslo's main airport was moved from Fornebu to a location 35 kilometers north of the city. This new site is less land constrained, doesn't create noise pollution for central Oslo and is served by the very impressive flight to get service, which runs on a high speed rail line that was built under the airport when it was first developed and which features a particularly impressive over 10 kilometer long high speed tunnel from just east of central Oslo under the mountains to just west of Lillistrom. The service which runs every 10 minutes to central Oslo makes the journey in less than 20 and some services travel beyond the city center, including a stop at Lisaker. Now with the new extension, Oslo's central tunnel will become even more heavily used and so a new roughly eight kilometer city center tunnel for the metro will be built in the future in the shape of letter M, starting at Majorstuen in the west, serving a new station before dipping south to connect to Stuttinga heading back north once again to service a new station before cutting east across the existing tunnel to connect just east of Toyen. The new tunnel is good, but it does feel odd that a better alignment couldn't be found and thus key areas of central Oslo north of the city center and south of the city center, particularly along the waterfront will not be closely served by Metro. That being said, as with other cities with heavily interline city center tunnels from Munich to Brisbane to Stockholm, the additional capacity will be a game changer for the network as it should allow services to split between the two tunnels, nearly doubling frequency and thus capacity across the entire network, which is the powerful thing about networks which are so heavily branched, getting new tunnels. That might make you wonder though, how did Oslo get so much Metro in the first place? Well, the simple answer is by building a very large portion of the network above ground and by reusing existing tram infrastructure. Even as newer stations and extensions are increasingly tunneled, something which is still relatively cost effective in Norway given the country's vast experience undertaking such engineering works. Of course, structurally, a heavily branched network is also probably more cost effective because it minimizes duplication of the most expensive underground city center infrastructure and builds more track where it's cheap in the suburbs. As is happening in Oslo, additional capacity can be later unlocked by adding city center capacity. There are also simpler things like the fact that some level crossings exist even today and the system's basic stations, even on the grade separated lines, which usually feature minor weather protection and ramps and overpasses rather than elevators or escalators. All in all though, Oslo's Metro is super impressive, especially for what is truly a small city. Thanks for watching.