Norway is building a record breaking tunnel on its northeastern coast as part of a €43.6 billion upgrade to its E39 highway.
Slated for completion in 2033, the Rogfast tunnel will not only be the world’s longest subsea road tunnel at 26.7 kilometres but also the deepest at 392 metres. It will boast four lanes of dual tunnelways, connecting the municipalities of Randaberg and Bokn across a 25 km wide body of water where the Boknafjorden meets the North Sea – four lanes that promise to slash the journey time between Kristiansand in the south and Trondheim over 1000 kilometres north by a whopping 11 hours.
Eliminating unreliable ferry crossing
It’s a route that currently entails seven ferries, in a region where sailings are often disrupted by inclement weather, says Oddvar Kaarmo, the Rogfast project manager, who points out: “The port at Mortavika is quite exposed, and in the winter, ferries sometimes have to divert to another port.”
The new “ferry replacement project” roadway will eliminate those uncertainties. “Once the tunnel is finished, we will not have to rely on good weather to keep the roads open,” Kaarmo promises. It will be 40% funded by taxpayer money with the rest recovered retrospectively thanks to a toll charge on road users.
Other ferries could be set to be replaced by floating underwater tunnels anchored to the sea bed or suspended, overcoming one of the challenges of building in fjords so deep they defy regular tunnelling methods.
Geostrategic importance
The current title for the world’s longest and deepest tunnel is also held by Norway, in the shape of the 24-km-long Laerdal tunnel, linking Laerdal and Aurland. But both Laerdal and Rogfast could be outshone if a proposed infrastructure project to connect Europe’s high-speed railways with Africa ever comes to fruition.
Described by Spain’s transport minister, Raquel Sanchez, as “a project of maximum geostrategic importance for our countries and for relations between Europe and Africa,” the so-called “Europe-Africa Gibraltar Strait Fixed Link” – a 27-km-long rail tunnel beneath the Gibraltar Strait – underwent a feasibility study funded by the European Union in 2023 and is now reported to be at the “strategic planning stage.”
Estimated at a cost of at least €6 billion, the tunnel would be bored under the Strait of Gibraltar, linking Algeciras in the southern Spanish region of Cadiz to Tangier, Morocco. Tangier is known to some as the “gateway to Africa” and is the continent’s largest port.
