Hallandsås tunnel
Encyclopedia
Tunnel
A tunnel is an underground passageway, completely enclosed except for openings for egress, commonly at each end.A tunnel may be for foot or vehicular road traffic, for rail traffic, or for a canal. Some tunnels are aqueducts to supply water for consumption or for hydroelectric stations or are sewers...
under construction in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. It will go between the north and the south side of the Hallandsås
Hallandsås
Hallandsås is a horst on the border between the Swedish counties Skåne and Halland.It is part of a geological formation that includes an island in the sea outside the village of Torekov near Båstad called Hallands Väderö. The geological formation continues with the Linderödsåsen in Skåne. It was...
. The planned length is 8.7 km (5.4 mi) (8,722 m in one bore, 8,710 m in the other). It will be utilized by the West Coast Line, on the section between Ängelholm
Ängelholm
Ängelholm is a locality and the seat of Ängelholm Municipality in Skåne County, Sweden with 22,532 inhabitants in 2005.It is known for its clay cuckoos — a special kind of ocarina. This is however a dying tradition as there is now only one producer of clay cuckoos, Sofia Nilsson.Tourism is an...
and Halmstad
Halmstad
Halmstad is a port, university, industrial and recreational city at the mouth of Nissan in the province of Halland on the Swedish west coast. Halmstad is the seat of Halmstad Municipality and the capital of Halland County...
in southwestern Sweden. When finished, it will enhance the connection between the cities of Gothenburg
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden, and Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, Denmark.
Background
The tunnel is part of a bigger project on rebuilding the whole West Coast Line to double track. In the context of this project, the single-track stretch over the Hallandsås ridge is both too curvy and steep to allow for easy double-track conversion and still allow for high-speed passenger trains and heavy freight trains. The time saving for passenger trains will be about 4–5 minutes with the new tunnel, but more significantly the capacity will increase from 4 to 24 trains per hour over the ridge. Today, the ridge is a bottleneckBottleneck
A bottleneck is a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or limited number of components or resources. The term bottleneck is taken from the 'assets are water' metaphor. As water is poured out of a bottle, the rate of outflow is limited by the width...
and the passenger train service between Gothenburg
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
/Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
and Malmö
Malmö
Malmö , in the southernmost province of Scania, is the third most populous city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg.Malmö is the seat of Malmö Municipality and the capital of Skåne County...
, as well as most freight trains do a long detour along the Halmstad–Hässleholm railway (which is also somewhat too steep for efficient freight traffic) and on the congested railway Hässleholm–Malmö. The tunnel project was conceived by the European Round Table of Industrialists
European Round Table of Industrialists
The European Round Table of Industrialists was born out of a growing preoccupation with thestate of the European economy in the early 1980s. Frequently diagnosed as “eurosclerosis”, the...
and the Swedish Rail Administration in the 1980s.
1990s: Problems, scandal, and stoppage
Construction began in 1992, and the traffic opening was originally planned for 1995. However, construction was plagued by major difficulties concerning large amounts of water seeping in from surrounding rock. Only a small fraction of this water leakage had been foreseen. Additionally, the original drill broke down after only drilling 18 meters. A scandal also broke out when it was learned that a poisonous sealing compound called "Rhoca-GilRhoca-Gil
Rhoca-Gil is a type of industrial sealant produced by Rhône-Poulenc, used in the construction of tunnels to block the passage of groundwater into the tunnel...
" was used during construction. This substance was linked to the death of nearby livestock. Rhoca-Gil contains acrylamide
Acrylamide
Acrylamide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula C3H5NO. Its IUPAC name is prop-2-enamide. It is a white odourless crystalline solid, soluble in water, ethanol, ether, and chloroform. Acrylamide is incompatible with acids, bases, oxidizing agents, iron, and iron salts...
, a toxic chemical that is mutagen
Mutagen
In genetics, a mutagen is a physical or chemical agent that changes the genetic material, usually DNA, of an organism and thus increases the frequency of mutations above the natural background level. As many mutations cause cancer, mutagens are therefore also likely to be carcinogens...
ic and possibly carcinogen
Carcinogen
A carcinogen is any substance, radionuclide, or radiation that is an agent directly involved in causing cancer. This may be due to the ability to damage the genome or to the disruption of cellular metabolic processes...
ic. The main contractor, Skanska
Skanska
Skanska AB, is a multinational construction and development company based in Sweden, where it also is the largest construction company. The company's head office is in Solna, north of Stockholm.-History:...
, took no special precautions for the sealant. Also, it did not tell its own workers or the local population of the risks. By October 1997, local cattle and fish started dying. In addition, workers were becoming ill. The local press started an investigation. After tests were done showing high levels of acrylamide contamination, the site was declared a high risk zone and the sale of agricultural products from the region was banned. The main contractor, Skanska, along with Rhone-Poulenc
Rhône-Poulenc
-History of the company:The Company was founded in 1928 through the merger of Société des Usines Chimiques du Rhône from Lyon and Établissements Poulenc Frères from Paris founded by Étienne Poulenc, a 19th century Parisian apothecary and brought to prominence by his second and third sons Emile...
and Swedish Railways
Statens Järnvägar
The Swedish State Railways or SJ, originally the Royal Railway Board , is a former government agency responsible for operating the state railways in Sweden....
all had criminal charges brought against them. Some senior executives resigned as a result.
Construction was halted in late 1997. By this time, nearly 3 km per traffic tunnel had been bored (1200 m at the north end, 1700 m at the south end, and 40 m at the central adit
Adit
An adit is an entrance to an underground mine which is horizontal or nearly horizontal, by which the mine can be entered, drained of water, and ventilated.-Construction:...
).
2000s: Construction resumes
In 2005 construction resumed with a new completion date estimated at 2012, later updated to 2015. Only one tunnel is being drilled at a time, thus there is only one tunnel boring machine (nicknamed "Åsa") for the project. There will be 19 emergency cross-passages between tunnels, some of which have already been bored. One of these passages is part of the central adit.The problem of drilling through saturated earth is being tackled by drilling a pilot tunnel ahead of the TBM, and then freezing the surrounding rock to a temperature of −40° C (−40° F), thereby guaranteeing solid strata for the TBM's progress. On 25 August 2010, around 13:10 CET
Central European Time
Central European Time , used in most parts of the European Union, is a standard time that is 1 hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time . The time offset from UTC can be written as +01:00...
, breakthrough was achieved in the eastern tunnel. As of the beginning of November 2011, 1,650 m (31 percent) out of approximately 5500 m of the western tunnel has been drilled after 34 weeks on the job.
Cost
Cost overrunCost overrun
A cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, is an unexpected cost incurred in excess of a budgeted amount due to an under-estimation of the actual cost during budgeting...
has been large. The cost was expected in 1992 to be 1 billion Swedish krona
Swedish krona
The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value...
(SEK). The cost from 1992 to 1997 was in reality more than SEK 2 billion, for less than half the tunnel length. Since the remaining cost at the beginning of 2005 was calculated to be more than SEK 4 billion, there has been much debate and hesitation as to whether to halt or resume work. The total cost is likely to reach over SEK 12 billion, approximately 2 billion USD (calculated 2008) before the project is finished.