The $11BN Tunnel Connecting Scandinavia to the Mediterranean | Hacker News Reader

The $11BN Tunnel Connecting Scandinavia to the Mediterranean

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47 pointslelf29 comments

What a horrible clickbait title.

They're digging a 64km long tunnel through the Alps - so technically it does enable a connection of Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. But it's not a tunnel from Scandinavia all the way to the Mediterranean like the title implies.

You could also say it connects Latvia to South Africa ...

Next up, connecting Paris with Bangkok: the Bosphorus Bridge!

B1M is really bad, I'd advise people to stop watching their channel, there are better ones out there.

How can it be that they don't mention "Brenner Base Tunnel" anywhere in the description? It must be on purpose. Are they somehow gaming the YouTube algorithm such that it won't be able to categorize it in any specific bucket?

What are the better ones out there? I love this kind of content but don't know where to find it.

"Practical Engineering" and "Real Engineering". Actual engineers who describe compromises and shortfalls of various topics. B1M is a very weird channel that just seems to regurgitate whatever sugar-coated press releases the mega contractors running these projects shove out the door to justify their massively inflated budgets

I feel similarly about Asianometry. Nice title, cute video style but something is missing.

I really like Asianometrys videos. But I usually don't pay much attention to the titles

The question for us then is how did the piece ever get 47 (and counting) upvotes from HN readers?

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

B1M is really trying to hide it, but they are actually talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel

In contrast, the 2 mile long SR-99 tunnel under Seattle cost $3.3 billion, whereas this is 55km for $11 billion. I.e. in Europe they're tunnelling for $0.2 billion per km compered to the US at $0.97 billion per km.

Amusingly tunneling through the Alps may be easier and cheaper than tunneling through a city.

No NIMBY on the top of a mountain

I present to you the Second Avenue Subway [1]:

> The $6 billion price tag for phase two works out to $2.2 billion per kilometer. That would make it the world’s most expensive subway project on a per-kilometer basis, narrowly surpassing phase one of the Second Avenue Subway, which clocked in at “only” $1.7 billion per kilometer.

Let's compare that to Crossrail, which goes under London, a 2000+ year old city notorious for hitting Roman ruins where the only real solution is to dig deep (ie even more expensive) [2]:

> Crossrail was built in the heart of London to similar standards to New York Projects at $500M per mile.

[1]: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne...

[2]: https://tunnelingonline.com/why-tunnels-in-the-us-cost-much-...

Not only that, but a city that is predominately built upon silt and backfill

Definitely tunnelling through rock is a more straightforward proposition. Bertha famously hit an allegedly uncharted steel pipe part way through and had to have extensive repairs.

Clearly tunneling under a city is a very different proposition from tunneling under a mountain range. And I'm willing to bet that a significant part of the cost is not per km, nonetheless it's just another example of the crazy cost of civil engineering in the US

Heh I wonder what percentage of the final costs of these things is simply worker healthcare. I suspect the UK/Euro ones don’t have to account for that as that’s handled elsewhere.

Another recent datapoint is the tunnel between Germany and Denmark has a budget of €10 billion for 18km so €0.55 billion/km. Projects like these tend to have budget overruns, so maybe €15 billion? That'd be €0.85 billion/km.

But that's completely ignoring any geological differences of course, so not very realistic.

> But that's completely ignoring any geological differences of course, so not very realistic.

I could imagine that there are several other features of a tunnel that might affect its price considerably: cross-section dimension, number of pipes, technique of construction, security installations, ventilation, the type of use (rail, automotive, both), ...

For example, the Fehmarnbelttunnel/Femern Bælt-tunnelen you mentioned will consist of four pipes for both, rail and automotive, and is not drilled but built out of prefabricated modules (42m x 9m x 217m) made of concrete placed in a trench on the seabed and then covered with stones and sand.[1]

[1] Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarnbelttunnel (in German)

I think you got the US value slightly incorrect. 3.3 billion / 2 mile = 3.3 billion / 3.218688 km

That’s $1.03/km, no?

Probably, I was lazy in my miles to km conversion. I assume the distances aren't on the nail anyway, so probably $1b/km is the reasonable number in this context

Many moons ago I did the "drunken stumble around europe" thing with a friend. We tried to stick to trains wherever practical, but crossing the alps by rail was something like 20x the cost of the same trip by budget air.

We keep getting guilted for flying everywhere, but projects like this are needed to make the alternatives practical.

> We keep getting guilted for flying everywhere, but projects like this are needed to make the alternatives practical.

Projects like this are needed for very specific cases, like this. Not "everywhere", so yes you get guilted for flying everywhere when it is not necessary.

With Swiss trains it really pays to plan ahead. IIRC I used to pay ~$20 one way from Lugano to Zurich airport, which took about 2.5 hours. That was some combination of an advance non-cancelable ticket and the residence discount.

The equivalent air transport was ~$100 and shaved off maybe 30 minutes once you factored in all of the transfer times etc.

From the title I expected this to be about the Fehmarntunnel between Denmark and Germany. After all, there are already tunnels through the Alps. Also, this is the B1M, which isn't that good.

> Also, this is the B1M, which isn't that good

Do you have a better medium-length video content producer about large civil engineering projects? I'd be interested to watch.

> From the title I expected this to be about the Fehmarntunnel between Denmark and Germany.

Here's the b1m video about that project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLBv87VulPM

How long would this last in a conflict with Russia.

Before Russia makes it to the Brenner Pass? Quite a while.

Or, before Russian saboteur and/or missiles take it out? They could take it out immediately... but they probably have closer and more important targets to point their missiles at.

Taking it out would be very difficult, I'd think.

You could blow up some point, perhaps the two entries. But repairs are then comparable to when the two entries of any minor tunnel have been blown up. Doing any sort of damage that scales with the cost of the tunnel seems difficult.

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