First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, May 13, 2026, 7:12 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #100

dredmorbius wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such proposals exist under the rubric "Irish Sea Bridge": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Sea_Bridge >. The four leading crossing options would be the Kintyre (most northerly), Galloway, Irish Mail, and Tuskar (most southerly) routes. Irish Sea depths (notably Beaufort's Dyke), and unexploded and chemical ordinance, are principle concerns.

That’d be awesome. What is the current tallest ship that could damage a bridge? You can count on someone eventually doing that.

You'd want to look at various "max" ship designations, which are based on various dimensions: overall length and beam, draft, and height above waterline (generally to accommodate bridges). These correspond to various canals and harbours. E.g., "Panamax", "Suezmax", and "Chinamax".

The tallest ship I'm aware of is the Pioneering Spirit, a catamaran / split-hull oil-platform service vessel, originally conceived as being built on two supertanker hulls. Given its mission, it might actually operate in the vicinity of the Irish Sea.

The maximum designated naval architecture stated vertical dimension standard I'm aware of is Suezmax, with a 68m (223 ft) air draft, shown in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_ship#Size_categories>. (There are standards with unlimited air drafts as well, but I suspect most ships will fall within bounds of the largest stated.)

Oh, and another option would be for a tunnel-bridge hybrid, as with the Øresund Bridge, with tunnels to either side of Beaufort's Dyke and a bridge spanning that portion. I'm not aware of that being proposed though I suspect someone's thought of it. This would make for unlimited ship height through the passage overall. The Øresund span's clearance is 57m, FWIW.

Post by yxhuvud » Fri, May 15, 2026, 12:32 PM UTC

whizzter wrote: post #51

yxhuvud wrote: post #27

> The Fehmarnbelt Tunnel will complete the high-speed rail connection between Stockholm and Hamburg. Not really, mostly cause Sweden don't want to build high speed rail, even when EU would have paid for a big share of it.

That "minor" detail seems to have been outside of all popular reporting I've read on the subject, any links to how large a part the EU would've contributed?

It was in the news (at the very least DN) a couple of months after the current government scrapped the plans for high speed trains. So Dec-Jan 22/23 or so. Googling for it to find the details have proven to be hard, so I can't say for sure if those articles referred to grants part of the CEF program, but very probably so. And I also obviously can't give any numbers without refinding those articles. But it was a fairly large share, based on memory.

EDIT: Found it! https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/regeringen-bad-eu-andra-tagkartor-... mentions it and that the possible numbers were really high, upwards 100GSEK or more. But only 'possible' numbers and not granted ones, so who knows how much it would have been in practice.

Re: First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed

Re: First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed