People often become frustrated with the daily journey they have to take to reach their desired destination. There is good news for people traveling between Denmark and Germany. Millions of passengers who travel via the ferry service from Rodbyhaven and Putgarden, where it takes them 45 minutes to reach, can now rest easy, because after more than a decade of planning, the dream of traveling between Denmark and Germany is expected to turn into reality in 2029. The construction work of the world’s longest tunnel i.e. Fehmarnbelt Tunnel is in progress, which started in the year 2020. The Fehmarnbelt Tunnel is not just long; This is a miracle of the deep sea. The structure will be located in a trench dug 40 meters below the Baltic Sea.
18 kilometers under the sea: travel between Denmark and Germany by train in just 7 minutes
The tunnel, which will be 18 kilometers long, makes it one of Europe’s largest high-budget infrastructure projects with a construction budget of more than 7 billion euros ($7.4 billion). After this project competition, passengers will easily reach their desired destination in very few minutes. According to the technical specifications released by the project engineers at Femmern A/S, passengers will now be able to travel this sea journey in just 7 minutes by train and 10 minutes by car.
The Fehmarnbelt Tunnel Project is managed by Fehmarn A/S
To manage a project of this scale, the task was assigned to the Danish state-owned company Femmern A/S. The task was clear to build an 18 km long sea link between the two countries. The company has transformed the Danish town of Rodebyhaven into one of the largest construction sites in Northern Europe. According to Femmern A/S, the link will consist of a two-lane motorway separated by a causeway and two electric rail tracks.“Today, if you were to travel by train from Copenhagen to Hamburg, it would take you about four and a half hours,” says Jens Ole Kaslund, technical director of Femmern A/S, the state-owned Danish company in charge of the project. “When the tunnel is completed, the same journey will take two and a half hours.
Why not a traditional rugged tunnel?
Traditional bored tunnels work perfectly for deep rock, but the Danish and German seabed is surrounded by soft ground. The engineering applied to the project says that assembling this longest tunnel piece by piece using 79 standard concrete blocks, each element measuring 217 meters in length and weighing an incredible 73,000 tonnes, will allow the team to maintain speeds of 200 kilometers per hour for trains and 110 kilometers per hour for cars respectively.
28 year plan to repay $7.4 billion debt
The Fehmarnbelt Tunnel is not only an engineering marvel but also a huge financial undertaking, with a total financial structure of EUR 7.4 billion based on 2015 prices. The financial burden of this huge undertaking rests entirely on the shoulders of Denmark, which has successfully obtained the necessary loans through government guarantees. This huge financial undertaking has been made possible through substantial funding from the European Union, as the tunnel is part of the Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor, classified as a priority project. To ensure the financial feasibility of this huge undertaking, the Danish government plans to employ a user-payment approach, where the necessary debts are refinanced by charging future motor vehicle tolls and railway charges. Economists and project managers at Femmern A/S estimate that the necessary loans will be repaid within a period of 28 years after the tunnel opens, ensuring the financial feasibility of this massive undertaking, making the world’s longest submerged tunnel, a “green” tunnel for future generations.