Another piece of the world’s longest immersed tunnel has settled onto the seabed. FLC, the main contractor on the Fehmarnbelt project, has lowered the third tunnel element into place along the planned 18 kilometre route to Germany, off the coast of Lolland. That leaves 86 of the total 89 elements still to go before the tunnel connecting Denmark and Germany is complete.
Inside a three day tunnel element installation
The operation began on the evening of Thursday 30 July, when the element was towed out from the tunnel element factory at Rødbyhavn. Five tugboats pulled the 217 metre long, 73,500 tonne concrete element out to the tunnel trench, roughly 500 metres off the Lolland coastline. The actual lowering began on Friday, and by Saturday the new segment had been connected to the existing section of tunnel already in place.
Lasse Vester, deputy contract director at Sund & Bælt, described each lowering as a demanding precision operation requiring many moving parts to come together correctly, expressing satisfaction that another element now sits securely on the seabed. According to Vester, every completed lowering adds valuable experience for FLC, helping keep the wider construction on track. With the element now in position, its sides are being covered with stone and gravel to hold it firmly in the trench, while preparations continue for the next element to follow.
Heiligenhafen: the town behind the tunnel element’s name
Once complete, the Fehmarnbelt connection will form a key part of the European TEN-T transport network, linking the continent from Malta in the south to Finland in the north. In keeping with that theme, each tunnel element is named after a town along the corridor. The third element takes its name from Heiligenhafen, a German coastal town on the Baltic Sea in Schleswig-Holstein, close to Fehmarn. Heiligenhafen has served as a port and trading town for centuries, with long standing links to Scandinavia, and will now lend its name to a tunnel element helping tie Scandinavia and central Europe more closely together.
About the Fehmarnbelt tunnel element project
The Fehmarnbelt project ranks among Europe’s largest infrastructure undertakings. At 18 kilometres, the immersed tunnel between Denmark and Germany will become the longest of its kind in the world, carrying a motorway with two lanes in each direction alongside two electrified rail tracks. Once open, the crossing will take just 10 minutes by car and 7 minutes by train. The connection is designed to strengthen ties between Scandinavia and the rest of Europe, and is being built as a user funded project with support from the EU.
