The 2.6 bn plan cover only the Esbjerg-Lunderskov electrification and the double-tracking of the Vamdrup-Vojens alignment, both of which have a target date of 2015 (it also says so in the Railway Gazette article you linked to in the diary), and an assortment of small fry like new stations. The target dates for the assorted small fry are not published in the press release I found, but they are all connected either to the big-ticket projects or to the realignment of the Danish hospital system, so their deadlines are going to be in the same neighbourhood.

Everything else I could find is either agreements made under the previous government, agreements on conducting preliminary studies or agreements on the principle that such expansions should be done at some unspecified future date.

But the latter are not completely cheap talk under the Danish parliamentary tradition. Basically, what we're seeing here is the gradual process of turning the previous government's vague grand design into an operational strategy. This is not unusual procedure for the Danish bureaucracy, and while perhaps slower than one would have wished it ensures that such projects have a certain staying power. It also means that for the next five or so years, you will not see anything in the way of "new-new" projects. What you will see is concrete allocation of funding of various parts of the projects and a firming of the time tables ("everything 'before 2020'" becomes "this bit by 2015, that bit by 2018, and everything else 'before 2020'").

The main impact of differing political priorities will be the rate at which funds are allocated, and the order in which parts of the project are completed. And, of course, the risk of parts or all of the project being scrapped.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.