It is the second longest bridge in Europe with both roadway and railway combined in a single structure, running nearly 8 kilometres (5 miles) from the Swedish coast to the artificial island Peberholm in the middle of the strait.

The bridge was designed by Jørgen Nissen and Klaus Falbe Hansen from Ove Arup and Partners, and Niels Gimsing and Georg Rotne.

[8] The justification for the additional expenditure and complexity related to digging a tunnel for part of the way, rather than raising that section of the bridge, was to avoid interfering with air traffic from the nearby Copenhagen Airport, to provide a clear channel for ships in good weather or bad, and to prevent ice floes from blocking the strait.

[10][11] The idea was dropped during World War II, but picked up again thereafter and studied in significant detail in various Danish-Swedish government commissions through the 1950s and 1960s.

Additionally, some regional and local interests argued that other bridge and road projects, notably the then-unbuilt Great Belt Fixed Link, should take priority.

[17] The official dedication took place on 1 July 2000, with Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden as the hostess and host of the ceremony.

[18] Because of the death of nine people, including three Danes and three Swedes, at the Roskilde Festival the evening before, the ceremony opened with a minute of silence.

On 12 June 2000, two weeks before the dedication, 79,871 runners competed in Broloppet, a half marathon from Amager, Denmark, to Skåne, Sweden.

This may be due to Danes buying homes in Sweden to take advantage of lower housing prices in Malmö and commuting to work in Denmark.

The structure has a mass of 82,000 tonnes and supports two railway tracks beneath four road lanes in a horizontal girder extending along the entire length of the bridge.

A girder and cable-stayed design was chosen to provide the specific rigidity necessary to carry heavy rail traffic, and also to resist large accumulations of ice.

Peberholm is a designated nature reserve built from Swedish rock and the soil dredged up during the bridge and tunnel construction, approximately 4 km (2.5 mi) long with an average width of 500 m (1,640 ft).

The connection between Peberholm and the artificial peninsula at Kastrup on Amager island, the nearest populated part of Denmark, is through the 4.05-kilometre-long (2.52 mi) Drogden Tunnel (Drogdentunnelen).

The tube tunnel is made from 20 prefabricated reinforced concrete segments – the largest in the world at 55,000 tonnes each – interconnected in a trench dug in the seabed.

The rail link is operated jointly by the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) and the Danish railway infrastructure manager Banedanmark.

Passenger train service is commissioned by Skånetrafiken and the Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority (Trafikstyrelsen) under the Øresundståg brand, with Transdev and DSB being the current operators.

[27] A series of new dual-voltage trains was developed, linking the Copenhagen area with Malmö and southern Sweden as far as Gothenburg and Kalmar.

With both Sweden and Denmark being part of the Nordic Passport Union since the 1950s, border controls between the two countries have been abolished for decades and travellers can normally move freely across the Øresund Bridge.

[29] This led to the enforcement of checks by private security guards at, for instance, the rail station in Kastrup airport in Denmark, an unpopular move with passengers, due to the delays imposed.

[33] In 2006, Sweden began work on the Malmö City Tunnel, a SEK 9.45 billion connection with the bridge that was completed in December 2010.