Faroe Island roundabout under the Atlantic Ocean | Hacker News Reader

Faroe Island roundabout under the Atlantic Ocean

nordfra.dk

95 pointssohkamyung65 comments

More pictures and a map: https://www.estunlar.fo/en/about-the-tunnels/the-eysturoy-tu...

It's amazing they did this in four years for $160mil while here in Hawaii our elevated rail broke ground in 2011, is going to cost between $9 and $13 billion, and is expected to be completed in 2033. Please send the construction team over here next...

These pictures are rederings though.

Sure but from the main article I couldn't tell why they needed an underwater roundabout in the first place.

The Eysturoy tunnel is an Y-shaped tunnel, connecting three islands of the Faroe. (Edit: Not entirely true, as two of the mouths are actually on different peninsulas of the same island Eysturoy.)

I guess they could have chosen to dig 2 different tunnels, but that would probably have been more expensive because of the increase in kilometers, seeing how long they dig under land at the mouths in order for the tunnel to be deep enough at the banks/shores.

This article has photographs of the roundabout itself being decorated by a local artist:

https://portal.fo/dagur-36150/myndir-listaverkid-hja-trondi-...

I love that each exit has a different colour light. The neon lights in themselves strike me as rather tacky, but knowing you usually drive from the blue exit to the green exit is super useful and user friendly.

> The neon lights in themselves strike me as rather tacky [...]

I think this might also just be an effect of the fake high dynamic range on the pictures (i.e. a rather large amount of color bleed from an underexposed slice of the image was artificially enlarged to make it "pop" more).

Rail construction is more expensive because the loads are way higher - axle loads of 22-25 metric tons are common (https://www.forschungsinformationssystem.de/servlet/is/32505...), trucks are half to a third of that (usually 8t/axle, legal limit in Germany are 10t). The forces on the rails are also greater especially if higher speeds are involved - trucks here have a limit of 80 km/h and buses 100 km/h, whereas trains reach triple that.

But Hawaii is building a light metro system, with speeds of around 110km/h and an axle weight of about 10t (or less, I don't know how many axles there are).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honolulu_Rail_Transit

I don't know what the axle weight is but each car weighs 32.6 metric tons and travel in trains of 4-cars, the top speed is 88kmh (48kmh average).

https://planning.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/HART-presenta...

https://www.honolulutransit.org/inform/rail-facts#gsc.tab=0

*edit - decimal

You got the units wrong - 72.000 lbs is ~32 metric tons. Assuming carriages with two separate axle pairs that's 8 tons per axle, if two adjacent carriages share one axle pair a 4-carriage train has 5 pairs / 10 axles in total for a load of 128 tons it's 12.8 tons/axle.

Still, neither is something to take lightly (pun not intended), and I guess that building elevated makes construction a good chunk more expensive.

Whoops, missed a zero when putting it into google perhaps.

Here's the Hitachi Rail page with the trains, looks like four per car. http://italy.hitachirail.com/en/honolulu_381.html

So at 8 tons per axle its still within OP's truck limit.

Anyway I'm just kvetching because our 20-mile light rail is taking 22-years to build, is half complete, and a billion dollars over budget (as of now).

More expensive than tunneling under the Atlantic?

They've been working day and night! :)

A friend of mine was department lead at a concrete company, the company responsible for providing and pouring the concrete for the tunnel.

At times he had insane, practically 24-hour work days, for weeks on end. A lot of overtime payments, sure. But he never had any free time, and was "on call" all hours of the day.

We would be drinking a couple of beers, and halfway through his first one, his phone rings; duty calls, gotta go.

Thankfully, he quit back in May. Now he drives trucks for a furniture company.

That environment doesn't sound well managed or conducive to low-defect work to be honest.

It is also questionable as why this was preferred over just a tunnel or bridge between Strendur and Runavik along with linking the main road network to the other outlying islands like Svinoy, Fugloy, Kalsoy, Nolsoy, Mykines, Hester, etc. in addition to the bypassing of of the Stora and Litla Dimun islands by the proposed Suðuroy tunnel. Locals are not going to be happy about having to make a detour to an underwater roundabout tourist attraction when emergency services are needed; might as well name this the Tappan Zee of the Faroe.

It's a matter of economics. Passage will be tolled [1] and this particular tunnel is projected to make economic sense based on expected traffic.

Also, there's not much interest in a bridge/tunnel connecting Strendur and Runavík. That's not what the roundabout is for. Before the roundabout was proposed, there were debates whether the tunnel should surface in Strendur or Runavík. The roundabout is to connect both Strendur and Runavík to Tórshavn without either villagers having to circle around the fjord.

The other islands you mention are sparsely populated and have a hard time justifying the cost of subsea tunnels. Populations [2]:

  • Svínoy: 31
  • Fugloy: 38
  • Kalsoy: 75
  • Nólsoy: 224
  • Mykines: 16
  • Hestur: 18
  • Stóra Dímun: 10
  • Lítla Dímun: 0

[1] https://www.tunnil.fo/um-tunnil/eysturoyartunnilin/prisir/

[2] https://statbank.hagstova.fo/pxweb/en/H2/H2__IB__IB01/fo_vit...

https://web.archive.org/web/20201204062422/https://nordfra.d...

I don't understand why they'd say "in the world under the atlantic ocean", when the atlantic ocean is a subset of the world. Is there already a roundabout under one of the other oceans?

"First roundabout under the ocean in the world" is probably what they wanted to say.

"Faroe Island's" "first roundabout in the World", "under The Atlantic Ocean."

Yeah, it's a pretty roundabout way.

Faroe Island has never built a roundabout anywhere in the world, and now it has done so underneath the Atlantic Ocean.

Well, they appear to have at least 2 already: https://i.imgur.com/vwyhCw6.png

Hmm, those are probably small and not true roundabouts. More like intersections with a corner radius IMO.

Small roundabouts are still roundabouts.

Also a cursory scan of Torshavn shows lots of roundabouts, eg https://www.google.com/maps/place/62%C2%B001'16.2%22N+6%C2%B...

A Tórshavn roundabout even won the prestigious International Roundabout of the Year award from UK Roundabout Appreciation Society. Wish I could make this up.

https://local.fo/torshavns-smiling-roundabout-wins-internati...

If you like the combination of scandinavia and infrastructure: norway is currently also working on an amazing project to connect their costal region via a new coastal highway featuring some stunning tunnel and bridge proposals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCT-FurFVLQ

though it'll probably be delayed because they forgot that the wetlands they're building it through store lots of CO2 https://www.nrk.no/norge/xl/klimabombene-ingen-tenkte-pa-1.1...

I fail to understand why Faroe Islands need such tunnel in the first place considering the costs. There's only about 52,000 inhabitants on whole archipelago. Also it doesn't seem like they have a bunch of factories and much of production going on.

They have tunnels between almost all the islands, being able to drive between the islands rather than taking a boat on dangerous seas makes a lot of sense

The article mentions a budget of a billion DKK. This would be a bit over 100M $. So, expensive but not that outrageous.

Populations on these islands and their economies are small precisely because it is hard to get there and requires operating ferries (which costs money as well). Solve that problem and you might expect to see an effect on the local economy (more tourism, cheaper to move goods around, commutes to the mainland, etc.). If you then consider that they'll be benefiting from this for decades/centuries, it suddenly becomes a wise investment.

For the size of those tunnels that's pretty cheap I'd say. Both are about 11km and the most expensive one is 142 million usd. Even if you were to double the cost it's still fairly cheap. I wonder if it's paid for by the people living there or if it's paid for by the Danish mainland? Probably both. This will provide a good boost to their economy in the longer run.

It's paid for by the value of having a distant outpost in the middle of The Atlantic, and the EEZ that comes with it.

It's financed by loans, paid for by tolls:

https://www.tunnil.fo/english/pay-toll-charge/

I'd say it's downright cheap.

They have tunnels through a lot of the islands as well - mostly single track with passing places (looked pretty terrifying when I was there a couple of decades ago, though I was never the one driving).

A useful reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tunnels_of_the_Faroe_I...

Wow, that's impressive tunnelling. On par with the swiss I'd say. Any plans for the big one (Suduroy - Shetlands ~250Km)?

I visited the Faroes 4 years ago. Locals were proud of their cold storage industry. Fish from North Atlantic trawlers flash frozen many hours earlier than delivery to the continent. Lucrative.

I imagine a cross island road network would help this industry, opening new avenues for trawler arrival.

It was a wonderful place to visit.

Investing heavily in the infrastructure of the Faroe Islands and Greenland gives Denmark leverage whenever those territories start talking about independence. Furthermore, it's increasing the standard of living for the people who live there, and having infrastructure in place makes it easier to attract businesses in the future.

There's also a cool-factor.

So basically Copenhagen's way of keeping Faroe Islanders on Faroe Islands. Do they get along that badly?

And it's not money given to Faroe Islands, it's money given to companies much closer to home for doing cool digs beneath Faroe Islands. I believe that Denmark understands this difference very well.

There were plenty of people from the Faroe Islands and Greenland when I lived in Copenhagen a few years ago, and I never got the impression that Danes are hostile towards any of them.

The Kingdom of Denmark is trying to keep itself in one piece though, and ensuring that people in the Faroe Islands and Greenland are happy being a part of the Kingdom is probably a good way of doing just that.

Otherwise, they might just say yes when some US president attempts to buy them.

I don't follow local politics much, so I'm not 100% sure about the following. But my impression is that it's financed by loans, paid for with tolls for using the tunnels. And I think the project is being dug by Norwegians.

Denmark does pay a yearly subsidy to the Faroe Islands of ~105M USD to help with general upkeep, but that's not earmarked.

Oh, that shines a very different light on it, thanks!

NCC who dig it are Swedish, but this may be done by a Norwegian subsidiary

You're right, found this on NCC's Norwegian website:

https://www.ncc.no/vare-prosjekter/undersjoiske-tunneler-far...

In Norway we are currently building bridges and tunnels to a few islands with less than 3000 inhabitants for more than double the price of this Faroe project.

:-)

Is it common for rich Norwegians to legally move to Sweden and use almost Swiss level ISK to escape the 25% capital gains and ~1.4% wealth tax?

For posterity: I misremembered how much wealth is disincentivized in Norway - it’s “only” 0.85% wealth tax and 24% capital gains. This explains why there are way fewer who become millionaires in Norway than in Switzerland, even if Norway is so rich in resources while CH is not

No.

You used to have to take a large detour to get to Klaksvík - which is the second largest town - from Tórshavn (the capital). By taking the tunnel, you shave off 27 minutes.

Travel time to almost all of the north-eastern islands, and the towns on these islands, has been cut down by half an hour.

It is also safer. They also argue that it is cheaper, but I don't know about that.

Ignoring industry, that's just quality of life.

But consider a car accident; the ambulances have to get there in a hurry. Minutes might save lives here.

> consider a car accident; the ambulances have to get there in a hurry. Minutes might save lives here.

If that's the reason, why not build that tunnel in a big city, where there are a lot more accidents and lives to be saved ?

> Faroe Islands

> Big city

Choose one. Though being serious, it takes about five minutes to drive to the hospital from any point in the capital if you have sirens going.

Exactly, so again, if that's the reason, why build that tunnel at all in the islands with low population rather than in a big city where there are a lot more lives to be saved ?

I'm sorry, do you mean build the tunnel in an entirely different country?

> why not build that tunnel in a big city

The Faroe Islands are _tiny_. Land area of about 1,399km²

Just a little bit larger than New York City, which is 1212km².

Long Island, NY more than twice as big.

> Also it doesn't seem like they have a bunch of factories and much of production going on.

What’s this got to do with anything?

Economy is all that some people think about, never standards of living or politics.

When the financing for much of this was agreed upon it was under the previous danish prime minister Lars Løkke, who's wife is Faroese. The second he stopped they founded a company there which has close ties to some travel company among other things. Besides this the family has general connections to the economy there naturally.

the construction project: https://www.ncc.no/vare-prosjekter/undersjoiske-tunneler-far...

That photograph is beautiful. A work of art! The arch spanning that grand space, the track lighting making it look like an image from space, the curved walls. Like nothing on Earth!

It sounds like Norwegians were involved in building this, and they have precedent for this look. "hardanger bridge roundabouts" is a search term which will get you some pretty images for roundabouts like this. Admittedly they're not under the ocean, but they are underground at each end of the world's longest tunnel to tunnel suspension bridge. Underground funkily-lit roundabouts are pretty amazing!

I was on vacation in Norway, driving from Oslo to Bergen, when I happened to take the Vallavik Tunnel and came across a roundabout in a tunnel for the first time in my life. The length of some of the Norwegian tunnels is mind-boggling enough (the Lærdal Tunnel is 24km/15 miles long!), but coming across a dramatically-lit roundabout in a tunnel made me feel like I was in Mario Kart or something, not the real world.

And soon, first truly literal interpretation of "underground drifting".

Obligatory nitpick: Faroe Island's. Should be Faroe Islands'.

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