
How Sweden is building the world’s second-longest road tunnel - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/can-you-build-an-environmentally-friendly-megatunnel-sweden-thinks-so/
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nstom
With just 16km, this is not by any stretch going to be the world's second-
longest tunnel, just the world's second-longest road tunnel. The longest
tunnels are rail tunnels, which measure up to 57km (Gotthard base tunnel), and
if you count subway tunnels the longest is Guangzhou metro line 3 with 60km.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long_tunnels_by_type#U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long_tunnels_by_type#Under_construction))

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ttkari
The page you linked also lists tunnels built for water distribution, the
longest of which is the Delaware Aqueduct at 137 km.

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vermontdevil
And they are building a bypass of 2.5 miles but will take total of 8 years.
All so they can fix major leaks in the current aqueduct. Fascinating project.

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speps
And the longest road tunnel is in Norway:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A6rdal_Tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A6rdal_Tunnel)

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Gustomaximus
That seems cheap at $5million USD per km. I think I've heard of roads and
train tracks aline being more expensive.

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hansjorg
Surprisingly cheap.

There's recently been a scandal unfolding in Norway where the parliament has
been building a 250 meter long tunnel into its parking garage. Almost exactly
1/100th the length of the Lærdal Tunnel.

So far this project has cost 2.3 billion NOK, or 1.3 billion more than the
Lærdal Tunnel. That comes out to 1180 million USD per km.

(To be fair, included in that price is also the renovation of a building
external to the parliament).

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henrikschroder
Wow, it's pretty fun to read a completely positively spun article about
something that's been heavily criticized locally.

The highway in question has been a weird-ass pet project since the 60's. It's
been routinely denied and shelved many times, but after Stockholm implemented
congestion tolls in 2006, it had a resurgence.

Originally it was all aboveground and bridges, but the reason it's now morphed
into the longest road tunnel project in Sweden, is because the response to
every small NIMBY protest has been "fine, we'll dig it down, but it'll cost
more". Note that it's still aboveground in some places, and in something that
I'm sure is _pure_ coincidence, those areas are among the least affluent
residential areas of Stockholm. Note that everyone living above the tunnels
will still get to enjoy years of underground rock blasting, I'm sure that'll
be fun.

And since almost the entire highway is now in a tunnel, and since it's going
to be the longest in Sweden, the budget has gone up dramatically. How to
finance it? Oh, our glorious politicians decided to use money from the
congestion tolls. Never fucking mind that the initial promise of those were
that the funds were going to be used solely for public transportation projects
and improvements - things that would _actually_ solve congestion. But all of
that is now put on hold for the next 10-20 years, because this one road eats
all the budget.

Yet another criticism is that the highway doesn't really solve the problem,
because there's actually very little existing traffic that goes between the
points it will connect. Truck transports from the south of Sweden to north of
Stockholm take different routes already, they don't go through Stockholm. So
you won't get rid of all the heavy traffic that's currently congesting the E4,
because most of that is actually going into or out of Stockholm. All the ports
of Stockholm are over on the east side of the city. Yes, if you live in the
far west suburbs of Stockholm, you now get an easy way of going to the
southern suburbs, good for you, but that's going to increase total traffic,
not decrease it.

But the most annoying thing about the project is that in this latest round
where a ton of challenges forced it underground into tunnels, which resulted
in significant increases in cost and time, noone has re-evaluated what the
traffic situation in Stockholm is going to be like in 2026 when it's estimated
to be completed. (Note: Of course it won't be completed in time or on budget,
so 2026 is _highly_ optimistic already). Here on Hacker News there's regularly
articles about our glorious new electrically powered autonomous rideshare
future of transportation, but this highway project doesn't take any of that
into consideration. They're just assuming that traffic will increase like it
has the past few decades, they're assuming it's going to be 100% ICE-powered
human-driven cars. And yet you have articles like this which heaps praise on
the environmental concerns and solutions of yet another ridiculously expensive
highway that noone really needs or wants.

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tegeek
_Yet another criticism is that the highway doesn 't really solve the problem,
because there's actually very little existing traffic that goes between the
points it will connect._

The route between Kista and Huddinge is perhaps one of worst traffic route in
entire Country. This is because there is HUGE traffic almost 8-9 hours a day
on this route. I drive this route twice a month and its horrible. So I don't
know who told you that there is very little existing traffic here.

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mrmanner
That is true -- but most of that traffic is traveling to or from destinations
along the route, such as central Stockholm, the ports, or some of the nearer
suburbs. Quite few vehicles actually go from Huddinge (or south) to Kista (or
north).

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tegeek
That is not entirely true. You are implying that entire population who lives
on South side don't travel to Arlanda airport and in the same way, people on
north side don't go to Karolinska Huddinge which is situated on South side.

This huge project is a "bypass" and it'll work as any other bypass in other
cities around the world. Which means any kind of traffic moving from North to
South and vice versa, will bypass entire Stockholm, and right now I see huge
amount of traffic every day on this route.

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henrikschroder
Of course there is _some_ traffic going between the areas it will connect, my
point is that there's not _enough_ to warrant this huge road project.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but out of the heavy truck transports
currently clogging up Essingeleden, only 2% (Or was it 0.2?) or less would
actually benefit from Förbifarten, because there is very little existing truck
traffic going from way south to way north of the city.

> right now I see huge amount of traffic every day on this route.

Yes, but most of that is going to places along that route. So you won't _move_
a meaningful amount of existing traffic, you'll just enable _new_ traffic.
That's generally good, growing regions need more infrastructure, but my point
is that Förbifarten is the wrong way to spend that money. It's a prestige
project at this point.

If you had to spend that money on roads, I would have much rather seen
Österleden, because completing the highway ring around Stockholm actually
makes sense, there is plenty of traffic from the ports to south of the city,
and by making the full ring, that traffic would get a choice of direction
around the city depending on time of day and commuting patterns. And this
holds true for every trip across opposite ends of the city.

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Sharlin
Anyone have insight into different tunnel-building technologies? In
particular, when is a boring machine a more appropriate solution than
drilling-and-blasting?

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jpatokal
It's complicated and I'm not an expert, but I understand the main risk with
TBMs is running into a type of rock it can't handle and suddenly having a
multi-million dollar paperweight wedged in a very awkward location. They're
also not well suited to really hard rock, which requires frequent cutter
replacements.

In this case, the tunnel is very long and deep, magnifying the unknown
territory risk. Also, the bedrock in most of Scandinavia (and, I presume,
Stockholm) is both very shallow and mostly granite, which is extremely hard
and thus not a good fit for a TBM.

Source: My childhood in Helsinki was punctuated by the periodic sound of
blasting rock as they cut out what was supposed to be the new central station.
Overall, Helsinki is basically granite Swiss cheese due to parking garages,
pedestrian tunnels, basements, bomb shelters, military tunnels, the metro etc
and AFAIK all of it has been drilled and blasted, not TBM'd.

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Sharlin
Yep, I'm Finnish myself and figured it has something to do with rock hardness.
All the long tunnels in Finland I know of appear to be drilled and blasted,
including very recently built ones like the Tampere Rantatunneli.

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varjag
Most tunnels in Norway are bored through, and I doubt we have any softer rock
here.

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digi_owl
You sure about that? Most i have experienced along the coast have been been
done using explosives.

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varjag
Doubt it's any of the bigger ones (longer than couple hundred meters), or done
in the last three decades.

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kartan
> "The harder and stronger the rock is, the quicker we advance."...

I like how counter-intuitive is this statement.

I used to live in a place where the soil was part of a river delta. It was
really easy to drill but impossible to keep the tunnel in place and free of
water. And it sometimes just sinks the above-ground facilities:
[https://www.20minutos.es/fotos/actualidad/24-horas-en-
fotos-...](https://www.20minutos.es/fotos/actualidad/24-horas-en-
fotos-3169/4/)

> ..."Drilling and blasting isn't so time-consuming, but sealing the rock from
> water leakage is. If the rock is very fractured, we need a lot of concrete
> sealant or reinforcement columns to ensure integrity," said Brantmark,
> describing the work of the three Atlas Copco Drill machines in use.

Now I live in Stockholm and it's pure rock. These are pictures from the
subway: [https://www.boredpanda.com/stockholm-metro-art-solna-
centrum...](https://www.boredpanda.com/stockholm-metro-art-solna-centrum/)

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Tuna-Fish
Yeah, this is why there is constant talk of a tunnel connecting Helsinki and
Tallinn and/or Stockholm and Turku.

The distance is much more than the channel tunnel, and the population that
would use it is much less, but it might still be feasible simply because it
could be routed almost entirely through hard granite. In Helsinki a lot of the
kind of infrastructure that is placed above ground basically everywhere else
is being dug underground simply because the cost of digging is less than the
cost of land, and so everything that doesn't need windows gets sunk in the
rock. And when you dig, you actually get to recoup some of your expenses by
selling the stone you quarry...

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ajeet_dhaliwal
Not explained is how environmentally (the reason for building a tunnel instead
of a bridge) is better.

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Sharlin
Sure it was. It preserves the current environment which is preferable from
both aesthetic and ecosystems point of view.

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ajeet_dhaliwal
On the surface, what about the long term effects of boring giant holes and
tunnels through underground?

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jimstr
There was a previous Swedish tunnel project that had a number of incidents,
among others groundwater pollution caused by a new sealing compound that
contained acrylamid

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallands%C3%A5s_Tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallands%C3%A5s_Tunnel)

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zeristor
Don't forget the Norwegian ship tunnel too:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stad_Ship_Tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stad_Ship_Tunnel)

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tristor
This brings up the question of whether or not there's a good list of long road
tunnels you can drive through? I'd love to cruise through one of these
bouncing off the rev limiter, just for the fun of it :)

