Plans to resurrect the old stream along Åboulevard have been given the axe by Copenhagen Municipality because it has been deemed to expensive.
Investigations into the potential cost of the project found that the price would be 10.5 billion kroner, a fee that was too tidy for the likes of Morten Kabell, the deputy mayor of technical and environmental issues.
“It’s a beautiful vision and it would be lovely to make it a reality,” Kabell told Politiken newspaper.
“But considering the financial restraints we have today, I have a difficult time envisioning that we’ll lay down a two-digit billion kroner amount on this. So we’ll have to say that it won’t happen.”
READ MORE: City Council taking new look at old stream
Better bash Bispeengbuen
A more conservative version of the project would have brought the cost down to 5.4 billion kroner, but a pre-planning look into the project by the consultancy group COWI found that it wouldn’t have much of an impact in terms of reducing car traffic entering the city.
Kabell has instead suggested that the city tear down the unsightly car overpass at Bispeengbuen and divert it into a tunnel – a plan that is expected to cost upwards of 2.6 billion kroner.
In the late 1800s, Ladegårds Å, which flows in from the north of the city, was diverted into an underground pipe, allowing for the development of the heavily travelled Åboulevard.
In 2013, the city revealed that plans were afoot to sink one of the city’s main approach roads into a tunnel and re-establish the stream that once flowed where the road now is.
