Tunnel project linking Europe with Africa

Beyond the technological, human and financial challenges, the train tunnels under the Strait of Gibraltar, connecting Spain with Morocco will open hope for a close proximity of two continents, two cultures. minh.

Talking about world-class constructions, the 19th century has the Suez Canal, the 20th century has the Panama Canal and the 21st century is the tunnel connecting Europe and Africa.

"Merging Europe and Africa, it is the 10th most important of the 12 important jobs of the heroic Hercule. And this surreal dream will soon become a reality." The Rome daily " La Repubblica " commented on the European-African tunnel project.

(Photo: Typepad.com) From inspiration Channel Tunnel (tunnel under the Manche Sea connecting England - France), plans to build a tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar connecting Spain and Morocco formed from the 1970s. Spain-Morocco joint venture agency was born in 1991 to survey the seabed of Gibraltar waist. But then the work was stalled due to worsening Spanish-Moroccan relations in the issue of small sovereignty over the island of Perejil.

By 2003, the project was brought back by two governments to discuss. After completing the survey of the geological structure of the Strait of Gibraltar, it is expected that the tunnel will be started in 2008 and it will take 15 years for this project to be completed , ie until 2023 the tunnel will officially go into operation. If the tunnel goes into operation, the estimated time to travel from Madrid, Spain to the Capital of Tanger in Morocco will not be 6 hours.

Through research, American and British engineers found that the Straits of Gibraltar connecting the Atlantic and Mediterranean were very narrow, the sea was always strong, turbulent currents and swift currents. This natural condition forces the tunnel to be deeper than the tunnel under the Manche Sea. People have to build piers of hundreds of meters high, very difficult and very expensive. The intention to build a floating bridge was dismissed due to the excessive number of ships running across the Gibraltar corridor and also due to the excessive flow of water.

Like the Channel Tunnel, the tunnel will consist of two main lines connected by a smaller tunnel. Only trains are allowed to circulate under the tunnel, prohibiting vehicles running on gasoline engines to ensure technical problems to install exhaust fans to push the exhaust gas out of the tunnel up to 40km in length.

Declaring in Spain 's El País daily newspaper, Giovanni Lombardi, an 80-year-old Swiss construction engineer, who was assigned to design the tunnel, said: "This is an unprecedented challenge in the construction industry. If compared, the Manche undersea tunnel is just a kid game. "

The train tunnel will be built under the Strait of Gibraltar,
connecting Spain with Morocco (Photo: Typepad.com)

The Manche undersea tunnel is a technological precedent but the financial problem is very smooth. But with this new tunnel, finance is really a big challenge, requiring investors to carefully calculate. The Washington Post has estimated that the tunnel project under Gibraltar is about 18 billion euros.

In addition to the tunnel construction in the Gibraltar Strait that is about to be implemented, the world has a series of other scale construction projects such as a 54 km long tunnel project through the mountains between Lyon, France and Turin and Italy. In 2020, a 125 km long underwater tunnel linking Taiwan with China is also being considered and the tunnel connecting Scotland with Africa has also begun to be mentioned.