Slashdot Mirror
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
And they're both wrong because the original has only one significant digit, so the conversion shouldn't add false precision. The correct conversion is "about a thousand feet."
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.
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.