So, part II. Here's how transit services are funded in Copenhagen. I want to be very clear that this isn't a "good Danes, bad New Englanders" write-up; Greater Copenhagen has an excellent transportation system, but it's not perfect, planners have made many mistakes, there are a multitude of problems in the way projects are selected for implementation, there're cost overruns and delays, and Boston, despite the resoundingly negative public opinion of the MBTA, does have one an extraordinary system all things taken together.
I'll do this in 3 parts: 1. services in Copenhagen, 2. relevant political entities, and 3. recent history and transit financing in practice.
1. What the system looks like today. Copenhagen (CPH, for the sake of brevity) has six major public transportation services. 1. The first is the national Danish railway network that connects Copenhagen with other, major Danish cities and with foreign cities. Currently, the Intra-Denmark high speed services connected Copenhagen with Odense (the 4th largest city), Aalborg (the third largest) and Aarhus (the second largest), 90 (travel time: 1 hour), 170 (3 hours), and 240 miles (4 hours) from CPH respectively. Trains run twice an hour along this route. Hamburg is also reachable within 7 hours, via a rail ferry, and Stockholm is accessible by an 8 hour trip. 2. There's the regional train network that functions in a similar capacity to the MBTA-CR. 3. There's a pseudo-Commuter Rail network known as Øresundståget, that services a major, historical rail-line to the north of Copenhagen known as Kystbanen (the Coast Line) and services the Swedish side of the Sound (the straight that separates CPH from Malmö, Sweden. "Øresundståget is derived from "Øresund" - the Danish name for the Sound - and "Tåget" - the Swedish word for train). 4. There's the regional bus network that covers Sjælland, the island that Copenhagen lies on, 5. There's a suburban railroad known as "S-Toget" that services the area 20 miles around CPH along radial lines with a circumferential route on the outskirts of the CPH. This service runs 5 mins at peak, 10 and 20 off-peak. 6. There's the Copenhagen Metro, which is a fully-automated light-rail, "mini-metro" system that serves Copenhagen and Frederiksberg (CPH's "Brookline") that runs 24/7 with 2 min peak, 5-7 off-peak, and 20 late night headways. Øresundståget, S-Toget, and the Metro form the backbone of urban/suburban transit network - together they constitute 195 annual riders along 154 route miles (2014 #s). For reference, the MBTA heavy- and light- rail and CR network accrued 273 million riders along 452 routes miles the same year. Residents in Copenhagen takes 3x as many annual PT trips per capita than Greater Boston. All of those six levels of services are managed by separated agencies, all at the national level with the exception of the bus network (regional level), and the Metro (separate, quasi-public institution).
2. There are 4, progressively larger geographically Danish political entities involved in transit financing. The smallest polity is the municipality, the second is the "region", the third are the national authorities, and the fourth is the EU. Municipalities in Denmark are generally larger than in New England, often constituting two or three major "towns". They aren't very large - we're talking as is Belmont, Watertown, and Arlington were one political entity, that's the scope. The Municipality of Copenhagen is, however, coterminous with the historical city of Copenhagen and is roughly the same size in population and area as Boston (CPH smaller by about 70k people). Unlike New England where municipal finances are grounded in property tax levies, Danish municipalities sources their funds from income taxes - this has resulted in less town vs. town competition, but then again, tax-levels are generally higher than in the US. The municipality of Copenhagen levied $4.5 billion from income taxes in 2015 with a total budget of $8.4 billion and a expense per capita of $15,000; Boston levied $1.9 bil from prop. taxes the same year with a total budget of $2.7 billion and a per-capita expense of $4,500. The next level of governance is the "region", which is relatively new in Denmark. "Regional" governments resemble "counties" somewhat, but they're primary responsibilities are to fund and manage the health care system in Denmark. There are two relevant regions for Copenhagen: Region Hovedstaden (the "Capital Region") and Region Sjælland (Denmark's Worcester County). Regional governments derive their funds from income taxes as well, and they do actually play a role in transportation financing as they fund the regional bus network. The national authorities in Denmark fund the commuter railroads and the S-Toget, the workhorse of rail transportation in Denmark. The EU does fund some TEN-T projects, but it's not really a present force in urban transportation.
3. The good stuff, how this works in practice. For this, I'll focus on the Copenhagen Metro ("Metroen" - the Metro) primarily. Despite it's contemporary fame, Denmark was not particularly successful economically or well-renowned at any point in the 20th century. The post-WWII era prosperity ended abruptly and acutely with the Oil Crises which shattered the Danish economy. The Center-Left governments of this era, despite their admirable goals, had coalesced around stagnant ideas - particularly the idea of "level development", or rather the idea the economic growth must be distributed across the country and not localized. Ironically, this left Copenhagen (a bastion of the center-left, well really a bastion of the far left) in the lurch and the city stagnated for a half-century. In the late 1980s, a center-right government came to power with some new ideas and new motivations. They looked out at the European landscape and observed that successful 1990s-era European economies generally had a focal point, a city - usually a capital - that both heralded the success of a given country and also served at the spear-tip in entering an increasingly globalized economy. Copenhagen was to be Denmark's "engine", and thus this government began the process that would eventually result in Metroen.
There were three primary goals. The first was to connect Frederiksberg with central Copenhagen. Frederiksberg contains about 100k people within a solidly urban form, but is political distinct from Copenhagen. It's also rich. But in 1990, despite it's close geographical connection to Copenahagen, Frederiskberg lacked a high-capacity transit service to the core - it used to have a railroad, but as Copenhagen grew during the latter-half of the 19th century, the ROWs were slowly shifted and reestablished. Frederiksberg lost is RR connection, but gained a streetcar connection which disappeared in the late 1950s (basically it was Beacon St in Brookline without the trolley). The second, arguably more salient motivation, was real estate development. Copenhagen's harbor hosted industry, but most had disappeared, withered, or moved during the mid-20th century, leaving significant amounts of land close to the urban core, but completely unintegrated with normal city functions. Of particular interest to the 1990s center-right government was an area known as Ørestad, not a former port area, but a former military installation to the southwest of Copenhagen's core that was completely barren - it was, literally, grazing ground for cows. Surplus to military requirements, the government, along with municipality of Copenhagen purchased the area, and readied it for the construction of totally new residential, institutional, and commercial district close to the core. Metroen would be new city-area's connection. The third motivation was to reach the airport, to the southeast of CPH.
To accomplish these goals, the government established three "interest companies" - essentially governmental non-profits with expanded but narrow authority over transit service design/construction and land development. In metro Boston is would be similar to BRA-MBTA interagency. Each interest company aligned with the three stated goals above: Frederiksbergbaneselskabet (WARNING: Danish is an agglutinative language, words can get long. That means "Frederiksberg Railway Company") for the Frederiksberg-CPH link, Østamagerbaneselskabet for the airport link, and Ørestadsselskabet (ØS) for the Ørestad link and which also served as the over-arching organizing organizing for Metroen as a whole. These companies were funded by three means: national subsidies (at first, later Metro projects generally don't/didn't rely on national largesse), municipal funds, and the sale of development rights. ØS employed the "new town" principle in securing funds for development: build infra to raise the value of a neighborhood's land, sell that land to secure more funds for infra, rinse/repeat. They were able to do this effectively as they controlled both disposition of land and design/construction of the infrastructure.
Once the first three segments were finished (2002, link to airport in 2007), the state reorganized this structure. The land disposition authority was folded into another, Copenhagen-run agency similar to the BRA and the transit responsibilities were assumed by a quasi-public authority, though the fund-by-development model was retained and continues to this day to act as the primary funding mechanism for the development of the Copenhagen metro. And there has been quite a development. There are currently three additional metro projects underway in Copenhagen, with the final system expected to be ready for full-use in 2025. If the timeline is observed (it probably won't be, but for the sake of comparison), then Copenhagen will have added 27 totally grade-separated route miles (60% in bored tunnels), 46 stations (most in underground caverns), at a cost of $9 billion USD. Currently 56 million people ride the Metro per year, but with full completion (particularly of the "City-Ring" an inner-core, subterranean circumferential ring route) the ridership will, almost assuredly, top out over 100 million per year. To put this in perspective, in 25 years, Copenhagen built the Green Line. And that's not the only transit project in the metro area.
Now. There are many criticisms to heed. The first is that, while the Metro allowed for the development of Ørestad (and under-construction extensions to the former port areas of Copenhagen are pursuing a similar goal), it did not service the traditional concentrations of population outside of the core. There's a very substantial north-south access in Copenhagen running from the northern districts to Amager in the south that is serviced by the 5A bus, the bus with the highest ridership in Northern Europe and more trafficked than any single bus corridor in Boston, that was completely ignored by Metroen, despite the fact that these areas, more so than any other, could have supported improved access. Despite Metro's steadily increasing ridership tallies, the brunt of commuters in Copenhagen are still carried by S-Toget (the "S-Bahn" so to speak of Copenhagen), a system that is wonderful but has not been improved much in the last 25 years, despite there being a broader and (most likely) more substantial return on investment in improving this service. Metro projects have go over-budget. They have been delayed as well. Project management has, at times, been piss-poor. Sometimes it errs a little too close to "vanity project" for comfort.
So that's an overview (and, scarily, I kept that short). But there are some key points to take away. The first is the importance of municipal authorities. It's not just about funds. Yes, Copenhagen has more money than Boston - but more importantly, Copenhagen has more institutional authority than Boston. It can instigate transit improvements without having to go through a General Court. Municipalities also frequently combine their funds with others to achieve greater economies of scale - a ring of 11 separate municipalities at the outer-fringe of Copenhagen are currently funding a 27 mile light line connection the S-Tog radials in their respective districts. It's far simpler than GLX, but then again, it's projected to cost 22x less per mile than our lovely project. Project design, approval, and execution is also far more streamlined. This is partially the result of Danes' lack of fear of bureaucracy, the public comments process is much more restricted than in the US and generally completed within 7 or 8 months. However, the greater financial and institutional authority of Danish municipalities also lends a much greater level of security and of agency to transit projects - decisions can be made more quickly, more openly as each municipality actually has the ability to call up funds for these sorts of projects. That's in contrast the, generally decades-long, process of building coalitions in State and Federal representations in order to secure funding for projects in Massachusetts.
