“On the shores of the Baltic Sea, in the south of Denmark, a vast engineering marvel is taking shape — piece by giant concrete piece — that, when finished, will drastically redraw the road and rail maps of Europe,” reports CNN:
The Fehmarnbelt tunnel may not have grabbed the popular imagination in the same way as the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France did more than 30 years ago, but this structure is just as impressive, if not more so.
Linking Denmark and Germany, the Fehmarnbelt will carry two-lane road highways under the water in both directions, plus two electrified rail lines — a multiple tube thoroughfare that will plunge beneath the waves of one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
At 18 kilometers (11.2 miles), it’s nowhere near as long as the 50-kilometer (31-mile) Channel Tunnel, but in many other ways it’s bigger. The project will, in fact, be the world’s longest road and rail tunnel, and the world’s longest immersed tunnel….
As an “immersed” tunnel, instead of being dug through solid land mass like the Channel Tunnel, the Fehmarnbelt is made using prefabricated concrete sections which are dropped into a trench dug on the seafloor, linked together, and then buried.
This tunnel will make it much faster to travel from Zealand — the largest and most populous island of Denmark — to Germany, Right now, travelers from Denmark’s capital Copenhagen (which is located on Zealand) first have to drive west to Jutland, before traveling south to Germany. This tunnel will allow them to take a much more direct route south to Germany, going by tunnel from the Danish city of Rodbyhavn to the German city of Puttgarden.
This tunnel will also make it quicker for German motorists to drive to Sweden and Norway.
