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Norway Plans to Build the World's First Ship Tunnel (newatlas.com)
Norway is planning to build the world's first ship tunnel through the country's Stad peninsula, which is home to harsh weather conditions that often delay shipments and cause dangerous conditions for ship crews. The proposed tunnel would enable ships to travel through the peninsula in safety. New Atlas recently interviewed Stad Ship Tunnel Project Manager Terje Andreassen about the project: NA: We'd usually expect a canal to be built for this kind of purpose, so why a tunnel? Because in this case we are crossing a hill which is more than 300 meters (984 ft) high. The only alternative is a tunnel. From a maritime point of view this is still a canal, but with a "roof." NA: How would you go about making such a large tunnel -- would you use a boring machine, for example, or explosives? First we will drill horizontally and use explosives to take out the roof part of the tunnel. Then all bolts and anchors to secure the roof rock before applying shotcrete. The rest of the tunnel will be done in the same way as in open mining. Vertical drilling and blasting with explosives down to the level of 12 m (42 ft) below the sea level. NA: How much rock will be removed, and how will you go about removing it? There will be 3 billion cubic meters (over 105 billion cubic ft) of solid rock removed. All transportation from the tunnel area will be done by large barges. NA: What, if any, are the unique challenges to building a ship tunnel when compared with a road tunnel? The challenge is the height of this tunnel. There is 50 m (164 ft) from bottom to the roof, so all secure works and shotcrete must be done in several levels. The tunnel will be made dry down to the bottom. We solve this by leaving some rock unblasted in each end of the tunnel to prevent water flowing in.
Assuming it does indeed go ahead -- and with the Norwegian government having already set aside the money, this seems relatively likely -- the Stad Ship Tunnel will reach a length of 1.7 km (1.05 miles), and measure 37 m (121 ft) tall and 26.5 m (87 ft) wide. It's expected to cost NOK 2.3 billion (over US$272 million) to build and won't actually speed up travel times, but instead focuses on making the journey safer. Top-tier architecture and design firm Snohetta has designed the entrances, and the company's early plans include sculpted tunnel openings and adding LED lighting on the tunnel ceiling.
Assuming it does indeed go ahead -- and with the Norwegian government having already set aside the money, this seems relatively likely -- the Stad Ship Tunnel will reach a length of 1.7 km (1.05 miles), and measure 37 m (121 ft) tall and 26.5 m (87 ft) wide. It's expected to cost NOK 2.3 billion (over US$272 million) to build and won't actually speed up travel times, but instead focuses on making the journey safer. Top-tier architecture and design firm Snohetta has designed the entrances, and the company's early plans include sculpted tunnel openings and adding LED lighting on the tunnel ceiling.
300 meters is 984 feet.
Set it to Haste 2, and get a large chest of unbreakable 3, efficiency V diamond pickaxes!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Sure, having boats go through the tunnel is badass as long as it's not to the tune of "it's a small world after all", but things get even more interesting when we consider that tunnels of that scale will be exactly what we need to deploy the giant robots when the alien monsters come by.
... just the first BIG ship tunnel as stated in TFA. For the first ship tunnel in Europe, they are a few centuries late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
considering the scale of this project I am surprised the cost is only US$272 million, has technology to do this advanced that far or are the Norwegians just very efficient. hell a lot of large buildings cost considerable more than this
Because of all the fjords any land road needs lots of tunnels, bridges and taking long detours inland, so travel by sea makes a lot of sense. Stad has been a major chokepoint because it's very exposed and has an underwater topology that creates huge waves, blocking all north-south traffic in bad weather. The value of reliability is hard to properly get into an economic model, but you probably wouldn't use a way to get to work that only got you there 95% of the time. This would allow you to rely on sea traffic being far more punctual than before all year long.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Because, as you say, it doesn't solve the passenger issue, and passenger routes are fairly common along the norwegian coast, due to much shorter routes than with strictly land-based transportation.
I think they mean in the sense of an actual route, not just storage/maintenance underground docks.
For exemple the Rove Tunnel in France : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rove_Tunnel
2.3 billions m3 build in 1927
As Kjella writes in another post, this particular area is the single worst weather hurdle along the entire Norwegian coast, and we do have a lot of coastline:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I.e. significantly longer than the US even when you include Alaska, this meant that sea travel was by far the most important transportation network here at least since the vikings.
It is somewhat telling that the coastal route around the country (where the Hurtigruten goes between Bergen and Kirkenes, taking 11 days for the round trip) is considered "highway 1", our road system numbering therefore starts with highway 2.
The english wikipedia article about this project is somewhat short but still pretty good, mentioning that the first proposal came in 1874.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Losing an autonomous ship still means losing a ship. On a plus side, tourism!
This is blinging
Most boats down to even 10 meter recreational vessels already have pretty good autopilots, often integrating cartography, bathymetry and radar, but they don't always work that well in close approaches due to shifting channels, local currents and tides.
Most ports have professional pilots that bring large ships into harbors because expertise is needed in those local features, and they might also require tugs, too, for precision movement.
First of what ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q3uHv_DRbA
300 meters is not 384 ft. It's about 984 ft.
Why not use autonomous ships on the dangerous passage instead? Autonomous ships are expected in the next few years, even before autonomous cars.
Only by people who are living in technology la-la land like the authors of the cited article. They're proposing transoceanic cargo vessels with no crew, because as everyone knows the only thing the crew needs to do is click OK for a mid-Atlantic course correction and the rest of the time they're sitting around doing nothing, since a ship runs itself and deals with every eventuality automatically.
300 meters != 384 feet
Depends on who you are - I saw this guy in circus once; I don't think it would take more than one of his feet to make up 1 meter.
Not a single Jules Verne reference?!?!?!?
I am not left-handed, either!
I can only speculate, but since there are a number of cities on that peninsula, that would mean building a bridge as well. Also, blasting out all that extra mass would not be cheap either, and I expect the walls would still need to be secured to avoid the risk of ships being pelted by boulders.
Even if none of those considerations were financially relevant, it's unlikely that such a visual impact on the generally pristine Norwegian nature would have been approved. You're talking about a nation that'll build a tunnel under a fjord rather than a bridge over it, because bridges be ugly.
World's first ship tunnel. But what world? The modern world? I ask because some 25 kilometer from where I live there is a ship tunnel that was build in the middle ages. It connected two larger rivers and made east - west travel possible, opening the energy, wood and iron markets of the east for the western coastal cities who traded with the rest of the known world. It is still a tourist attraction after 1,200 years. And this wasn't the only one that was build back then in the 'dark ages', but it is the oldest surviving 'ship tunnel'.
There are still plenty of undiscovered man made tunnels in the area. In the 70's an underground pagan temple was uncovered. This temple was used well into Christian times to escape from the harsh persecution of radical Christians when caught with practicing polytheism. To reach the temple, one had to travel 6 kilometers through an underground maze. Only people who knew the way would reach the temple.
I hope they plan a good light show inside the tunnel. And audio, it must have audio:
There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going.
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing.
Is it raining?
Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a blowing?
Not a speck of light is showing
so the danger must be growing.
Are the fires of hell a glowing?
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
Yes! The danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing. And they're certainly not showing
any signs that they are slowing!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Brunel did this in 1838, though smaller. How is this the world's first?
Well, in France, they built one in 1775, with a length of 3333 Meters and it's still used to this very day.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Slartibartfast?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
So the boston big dig is 3.5miles so about 3 times the length. Even in the beginning it was estimated to be 2.8billion (in 1982 dollars). So here we are in 2017 with a project 1/3 the size estimated to cost 1/10 the price. And the big dig went on to cost 14 billion. Its why I laugh when I hear local leaders saying they will put I-35 in a tunnel for 2 bil. Or why I laugh and continue to laugh at the clusterF they are doing on MOPAC. Its going to be 2 years late at least and some crazy amount over budget. Or the flood tunnel they put in to beautify downtown that went over budget by 3X and is still not complete.
Er ner, I herv brerken the terp of the merst erf!
Yer sherd herv werterd fer the terd ter ger ert.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Did I just hear the whooooosh of an autonomous ship sailing by?
I really hope they don't pass up the opportunity to make it look like an ancient artifact of Norse mythology; like straight up Gates of Argonath shit.
Or at least make it totally metal, like it was designed by Dethklok.
Come on Norway, gotta represent.
Did I just hear the whooooosh of an autonomous ship sailing by?
It was more of a "splish" or a "swish" sound than a "whooooosh"
The proper use of a tunnel allowing boat passage is in one of those amusement park rides where you would take your date.
Some people might say Norway is boring.
It's a 1000-foot high mountain. That's a lot of rock.
??? No one has mentioned the obvious? Should the estimates of sea level increases be accurate, which I believe them to be, in a few years, the only way for that tunnel to still be of use is if they gouge out much of its roof.
Automated control doesn't prevent a boat from getting slapped around by rough water. When the boat pivots around center of mass, causing the deck to drop faster than the freely falling objects that weren't tied down, this can cause undue stress to the transported cargo. Second, one thing that's nice about staying on an inside passage is that the nearby land blocks wind. When you're bucking into the winds around a low, making two knots while running the engines as hard as you usually do making twelve knots (even if there's software that prevents overspeeding when the prop catches air), generally the extra time and fuel consumed makes staying inside much more sensible and economical even though it's less direct. Also, are you suggesting that the Norwegian government buy a automated replacement boats for everyone North of the Stad peninsula? A bet a lot of other Norwegians would want new replacement boats, too. $272 million is starting to seem less and less expensive.