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.

Comments

Conversion typo

[MonoSynth]

300 meters is 984 feet.

Re:Conversion typo

[arglebargle_xiv]

For those who don't speak Norwegian, I've had the story translated into approximate Swedish as follows:

Nurvey's must hezerduous sheepping ruoute-a pesses iruound zee-a cuountry's Sted peninsuola und hersh lucel veezeer meuons deleys und duongeruous cundeetiuns fur sheep cruos ire-a a reguoler ouccuorrence-a. Un imbeetiuous pluon ieems tu sulfe-a zees by buoildeeng zee-a vurld's furst sheep tuonnel ouff uny signiffeecuont size-a durectly thruough zee-a peninsuola, inebleeng sheeps tu trefel in seffety. Ve-a recently interfiuoed Sted Sheep Tuonnel Pruject Muoneger Terje-a Undreessee-a ibuout zee-a pruject. Bork Bork Bork!

Not sure where all the sheep references came from, my translator is from Alingsås.

Re:Conversion typo

[crow]

No. 300 meters is 1000 feet. Don't add significant digits.

Not the first ship tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

For exemple the Rove Tunnel in France : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rove_Tunnel
2.3 billions m3 build in 1927

Re:seems cheap

[Stephan Schulz]

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

Maybe they are good at doing this stuff, but maybe they use the by now "normal" process for public works: You lowball the cost to get the project going and then argue with the sunk money that you need to finish it at 3 times the expected price. If the tunnel is worth 272 million, it should still be worth 272 million to finish it after the first 200 million have been spent. After all, the money is gone, but the tunnel will still be the same, and half a tunnel has very limited use cases. Lather and repeat...

Compare the F-35 development or Germany's Berlin Brandenburg Airport.

This has been planned for a very long time!

[Terje Mathisen]

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

Re:seems cheap

[dbIII]

The F-35 is not normal and is a very obvious symptom of overt government corruption IMHO. Lockheed is "special" - hookers and blow for the right people "special". It's so "special" it would make a Chinese Communist official laundering what he's siphoned off at Macao blush.

Re:Autonomous Ships?

[arglebargle_xiv]

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.

Re:seems cheap

[pr0t0]

Could be. It could also be that in Norway, if you send out an RFP, the companies that respond are capable of doing the work.

In the United States, if you send out an RFP, companies will respond that are actually unable to do the work but are happy to outsource it to someone else and add some percentage to the cost for the trouble. In fact, there may be times when the only companies even considered are ones that are incapable of doing it. As part of "The Fleecing of America" series on NBC, there was this coverage regarding the Hurricane Katrina clean up effort:

Here's an example of how it worked: The Ashbritt company was paid $23 for every cubic yard of debris it removed. It in turn hired C&B Enterprises, which was paid $9 per cubic yard. That company hired Amlee Transportation, which was paid $8 per cubic yard. Amlee hired Chris Hessler Inc, which received $7 per cubic yard. Hessler, in turn, hired Les Nirdlinger, a debris hauler from New Jersey, who was paid $3 per cubic yard.

That really happened, and I believe (based solely on the greed and ineptitude I witness daily) it continues to happen on most/all large-scale public works projects in the U.S. I don't know if that happens in Norway or not. If the tunnel was built in the U.S. using the example above, given an actual cost of building the tunnel at $272M, then the amount paid by the tax payers would be over $2 Billion. So that may be why it seems so low.