Denmark and Germany now building the world's longest immersed tunnel

[Mr. Sparkle]

(CNN) — Descending up to 40 meters beneath the Baltic Sea, the world's longest immersed tunnel will link Denmark and Germany, slashing journey times between the two countries when it opens in 2029. After more than a decade of planning, construction started on the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel in 2020 and in the months since a temporary harbor has been completed on the Danish side. It will host the factory that will soon build the 89 massive concrete sections that will make up the tunnel. "The expectation is that the first production line will be ready around the end of the year, or beginning of next year," said Henrik Vincentsen, CEO of Femern A/S, the state-owned Danish company in charge of the project. "By the beginning of 2024 we have to be ready to immerse the first tunnel element."

The tunnel, which will be 18 kilometers (11.1 miles) long, is one of Europe's largest infrastructure projects, with a construction budget of over 7 billion euros ($7.1 billion). By way of comparison, the 50-kilometer (31-mile) Channel Tunnel linking England and France, completed in 1993, cost the equivalent of £12 billion ($13.6 million) in today's money. Although longer than the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel, the Channel Tunnel was made using a boring machine, rather than by immersing pre-built tunnel sections. It will be built across the Fehmarn Belt, a strait between the German island of Fehmarn and the Danish island of Lolland, and is designed as an alternative to the current ferry service from Rødby and Puttgarden, which carries millions of passengers every year. Where the crossing now takes 45 minutes by ferry, it will take just seven minutes by train and 10 minutes by car.

The tunnel, whose official name is Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link, will also be the longest combined road and rail tunnel anywhere in the world. It will comprise two double-lane motorways -- separated by a service passageway -- and two electrified rail tracks. "Today, if you were to take a train trip from Copenhagen to Hamburg, it would take you around four and a half hours," says Jens Ole Kaslund, technical director at Femern A/S, the state-owned Danish company in charge of the project. "When the tunnel will be completed, the same journey will take two and a half hours.

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/fehmarnbelt-longest-immersed-tunnel-cmd/index.html

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. They're trying to escape!

[intrepidity]

2. Imagine such an engineering feat nowadays in the US

Do we even do such things anymore?

[DFW]

6. We can

There has to be a will before there's a way, though.

[intrepidity]

7. Of course. nt

[Kid Berwyn]

11. Those "things that are hard" weren't mentioned out loud much, anymore.

“Let’s go to the moon.”

“Peace in our time.”

“All are equal under law.”

Until President Joe Biden.

[mitch96]

14. We keep trying to get high speed rail service in Florida. The public voted for it twice I think and

It keeps getting shelved. Millions spent on "feasibility study's" and nothing, nada, bupkis..
Apparently we don't have the right lobbyists..
High speed rail from Miami to Orlando (Mouse land) and on to Tampa would hurt the airlines
I guess. To me it's a no brainer. Fly into Miami and do the whole South Florida thing. Jump on a hi speed rail and go to Orlando, visit all the Fun parks there and return to Miami then jet home..
m

[DFW]

17. I don't know south Florida much at all.

I would think the logistics of building a solid, dependable rail line though all the swampland and environmentally protected areas would be a real challenge. On the other hand, if done right, it would be a hell of a ride, and a super-time-saver. And, yes, I can imagine the airlines would scream bloody murder.

Of course, living in Europe, my perspective is heavily biased toward hi-speed rail lines.

Traffic is horrendous here, and I can just lay back, read, do a crossword, doze off, order a hot tea, and be where I want to go in almost the same time it takes to fly, sometimes quicker, since some European airports are way the hell far from town, especially places like Paris, Zürich, München, Brussels, etc.

[A HERETIC I AM]

18. The entirety of the Florida peninsula is not a swamp!

And they have been building railroads and roadways across the portions that are wetlands for well over a century.


Work on the Overseas Railroad started in 1905

Work on the Tamiami Trail started in 1915

Florida's Turnpike has been completed for almost 60 years.

It's not as if it's all swamp and alligators!

[DFW]

19. In that case, it's long overdue.

But it’s long overdue almost everywhere in the USA. We should be dedicating a quarter trillion dollars to a nationwide hi- speed rail network. Sure, it’ll punch a hole in the budget. So sit the next war out, or something.

[A HERETIC I AM]

20. One problem I see for High Speed Rail in this country is we love our cars!

And unlike many cities in Europe, with very few exceptions, most places in this country are not pedestrian friendly, so you would need a car once you got to where you're going. This is particularly true for Orlando UNLESS the train served Disney World directly as well as the I-4 corridor where the rest of the parks are located (Universal, SeaWorld, etc.)

I have long wondered why Amtrak doesn't offer a service like the "Auto Train" (Sanford, FL to just south of DC) to more destinations. Such a service does require a bit more terminal infrastructure than a simple train station offers, but if it would increase ridership, I think it's a good idea.

Of course any totally new HS Rail corridors built in this country almost assuredly requires acquiring land from private owners, which adds exponentially to the cost per mile.

[DFW]

21. Don't kid yourself, the Europeans are at least as addicted to their cars as Americans are

Maybe more so.

The streets and highways here are more clogged than Trump's arteries. To drive from my house to Brussels takes about 2½ hours if you leave at 1 A.M. If you leave at 7 A.M., it'll take you that long just to get from the outskirts of Brussels to a parking space downtown. Or try to get around Köln going from north to south (or vice-versa) during daylight hours. Getting in from either Paris airport into town by taxi is torture, same goes for the airports of London, München, Zürich. Some routes in the Netherlands can be better described as two lane 50 km parking lots, and a few million crazy Germans take 36 hour car trips to Italy and the Balkans every summer, most of their trips being spent immobilized on some Autobahn heading south. And then they tell me how strenuous it must be to go "all the way to America" so often (3 times a year). Right--I sit in a seat for 8 hours, with no one trying to overtake me in a life-threatening maneuver, get fed, watch a movie or two, or doze off for an hour or two, and I'm there before they have even gotten third of the way to where they're driving. And don't even start about driving in downtown Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam.

In Germany, there are still long stretches of Autobahn (their version of the Interstate system, by the way, there is no one "the" Autobahn) with no speed limit. "Freie Fahrt für freie Bürger:" free ride for free citizens. Burn up fuel faster at 220 KPH than a refinery fire, and put more CO2 into the air than you would with four cars doing 55 MPH (90 KPH). In Holland, a national pastime is "in de file staan," or standing still in a traffic jam. Think Santa Monica Freeway at rush hour with fewer lanes.

You'd THINK that with gas at close to $9 per US gallon here, they'd go easy on the car travel. Forget about it. My wife, from the flat rural northwest, where people grow up on bicycles, still tries to use her bicycle to go from our house into our small town, but she hates it. The supposedly "eco-friendly" town government has built some half-hearted bicycle lanes for some streets--which end in the middle of the street because they couldn't widen the street, and refuse to inconvenience motorists. Fatal or near-fatal accidents with cars striking bike riders are almost as frequent as gun shootings in the USA.

On a continent so thickly settled with so much attention being given to public transportation, you'd THINK that there would be a more healthy attitude here toward automobile travel, but alas, it just ain't so. One of the reasons that the last new car I bought (2013) has less than 30,000 KM on it after nine years is that the way they drive here in Germany frankly terrifies me. They'd rather risk death than pass up a chance to pass me going double my speed. I take ANYTHING--commuter trains, local trains, whatever. Camels, if they had them. If it's a longer trip, say down to Spain for the day and back, I'll fly. Anything but the car. Here, they are too numerous, and too crazy.

[CatWoman]

8. the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel

and it was built similarly to how this tunnel will be built

[hunter]

13. The new billion dollar Corpus Christi Harbor Bridge is a fiasco...

... like a lot of large U.S.A. projects.

Construction on new Corpus Christi bridge halted as engineers say design flaws could lead to collapse

In Corpus Christi, there’s a construction project that’s been giving public officials headaches for the better part of six years: the new Harbor Bridge.

The new construction is set to replace the current Harbor Bridge, which was built during World War II. But work has stopped, because engineers involved with the project are worried that design issues could lead to a collapse.

Chase Rogers, a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, says the project has had plenty of controversy. He joined the Texas Standard to share the latest...

--more--

https://www.tpr.org/news/2022-09-16/construction-on-new-corpus-christi-bridge-halted-as-engineers-say-design-flaws-could-lead-to-collapse

I blame anti-intellectualism. Believing really, really hard in something doesn't make it so.

[carpetbagger]

22. I wonder what's going to last longer, the new bridge or that haunted courthouse at the South end. nt

[greatauntoftriplets]

3. What? No more boat train?

I have fond memories of taking that boat train back in my youth.

[nycbos]

9. I took the boat train when I studied abroad.

When they said the train was going on a fairy and everyone was supposed to disembark I thought I heard wrong.

[greatauntoftriplets]

10. My sister had taken the boat train several years before I did, so I knew about it.

And it got me to Copenhagen.

[DFW]

5. Considering the reports from the arctic, I marvel at their optimism

I have taken that ferry from Puttgarden to Rødby many times. The technology is basically the same as it was in 1970, when I first took the trip. The train comes to a barricaded track at the water's edge. It is decoupled from the engine, and pulled back the length of the coachers meant for the ferry.This is done by another engine that come up from behind. The tracks are then re-directed to another track that is flush with the ferry, and the ferry has tracks installed in its lower level. The coaches are then pushed from behind by the other engine onto the ferry's tracks, and they are fastened down by immense metal hooks, so the cars don't shift during the crossing. The pushing engine is decoupled and pulls back, and the ferry hatch closes. An hour later, the hatch opens, and an engine backs up to the ferry. It is attached to the train, and off it goes on the other side. After the train is gone, cars follow off onto level streets.

What I want to know is to what extent has the prospect of rising sea levels been taken into account? Presumably, none of this on-and-off stuff will be planned for today's definition of "sea level," but if there really is a rise of half a meter or more worldwide, a construction like this will be in peril after 20 years or less. The train/ferry stations at Rødby and Puttgarden are very low, and a significant rise in the sea level could put even the current operation in danger. I hope the Germans and the Danes are taking higher water levels into account when they build this thing. It would be a marvel if it turns out to be a success. I remember the long ferry ride from København in Denmark to Malmö in Sweden. Now, with the bridge, the train ride takes about ten minutes.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. You appear to be talking about a boat train, which is in reply #3

and which says "no more boat train?", anyway. The OP is about building a tunnel, for which they'll lay pre-constructed sections on the sea-bed (217 meters long, 42 meters wide, 9 meters tall, and 73,000 metric tons each).

The boat train seems to have stopped running at the end of 2019: https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/hamburg-to-copenhagen-by-train.htm

[DFW]

15. No, I meant the tunnel

Specifically, the entrances at both ends

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. The tunnel entrances will not be at precise sea level

They'll put a sloping tunnel at the entrance, surrounded by a wall where it becomes uncovered away from the shore (in fact, they dig a trench all the way along, so that the top of the tunnel won't protrude above the current sea floor - see pictures 1, 10 and 11 of 11 in the OP CNN link). So the entrances will be well above sea level now, and for many years. And if sea level did rise more than anticipated, they'd just need to raise the walls around the tunnel entrance.