The Hvaler Tunnel is a subsea road tunnel which connects the island of Kirkøy to the rest of Hvaler

Hvaler

Hvaler is a municipality that is a group of islands in the southwestern part of Østfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Skjærhalden, on the island of Kirkeøy. The only police station in the municipality is located in Skjærhalden...

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. The tunnel opened in 1989 and is 3751 metres (12,306.4 ft) long, located on Norwegian County Road 108.

History

Prior to the tunnel, the services was provided by Hvaler Båt- og Fergeselskap

Hvaler Båt- og Fergeselskap

Hvaler Båt- og Fergeselskap AS is a defunct municipal company that operated the ferries in Hvaler, Norway. Founded in 1893, it was owned by the municipality until 2001 when it was privatized and sold to Glommen Bulk, that again split the company into Hvaler Fjordcruise and Hollungen in 2004...

. In 1986, Hvalertunnelen AS was established to take up a loan to build the tunnel, and pay the loan through collected toll fares. Tolls started at 130 Norwegian krone

Norwegian krone

The krone is the currency of Norway and its dependent territories. The plural form is kroner . It is subdivided into 100 øre. The ISO 4217 code is NOK, although the common local abbreviation is kr. The name translates into English as "crown"...

(NOK) and ended at 154 by 2007, when the loan was paid off. For another two years, a NOK 20 fee was collected by to finance a bicycle path on the island. From 22 April 2010, it was possible to make mobile telephone calls from the tunnel.