PC/WI: Tunnels between Ramsgate - Zeebrugge & Felixstowe - Hook of Holland?

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
If the finances were available, would it be feasible for 2 tunnels, ( Chunnel type ) to be built between Ramsgate and Zeebrugge & Felixstowe and the Hook of Holland?

Would it be practical to be built?

Would the traffic volume allow this?

Regards filers.
 
Don't know about the technical and economic practicalities. However, there might be fewer political and military objections to a tunnel that comes out in Belgium or Holland instead of France.

IIRC the first serious attempt at a Channel Tunnel was in 1875 as part of Edward Watkin's Manchester to Paris railway project. IIRC the War Office and Admiralty had the workings filled in because it was progressing faster than expected and their fear that the French would use it for a surprise invasion.
 

Devvy

Donor
Economically; highly unlikely there would be enough traffic for two tunnels. But even so, with one tunnel between say Ramsgate and Ostend, it's still about twice the distance of the OTL Channel Tunnel, and so comfortably more expensive and difficult, which means traffic needs to be even higher the the OTL (over) estimations to justify it.

Folkestone-Calais is always going to where the Chunnel is, because of how narrow the Channel is there. *If* there was enough traffic in an ATL to justify a second tunnel due to high levels of traffic, I'd wager it would be far cheaper to bore extra tunnels on the same route between England and France and ship traffic via it. East Anglia to Netherlands is over 100 miles though - even the Gotthard Base Tunnel, at 35 miles would be dwarfed by it, and that took 20 odd years to build, without the problems of having a sea of water above your heads.
 
IIRC, the Chunnel's geology was marginal, with the TBMs dodging and weaving through the one slim stratum of stable rock, barely coping with its few faults.
That for ~22 miles.

Had it been 30 miles, never mind the 35 of the wondrous Alpine GBT, then I don't think the Chunnel could have been built when it was. And, given Brexit, had it not existed, I doubt it would be built now due to political and financial uncertainties. (Perhaps in a dozen years when the dust has settled ?? )

Forget boring any other route: The geology becomes scary-complex, while the price per metre eats your budget...

Also, the Chunnel was necessarily dug from each end. The GBT had more advanced TBMs plus several additional access portals, via shafts from above or adits from valleys, so was worked on multiple 'faces'. That seriously eases the logistics, and allows work to continue elsewhere if one section has problems. IIRC, a TBM was stuck for several months due to 'soft ground'...

If you wanted a 'Ramsgate--Ostend' route enough, it would be better to have a 'cut & cover' system, sinking boxy tunnel modules in a dredged trench, connecting them then back-filling. I remember our astonishment when that approach neatly underpassed a 'bottleneck' bridge at Conway/Conwy. IIRC, it has been used for a lot of more complex projects. The big advantage is 'boxes' may be mass-produced in dry-docks, floated out and placed precisely...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersed_tube
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A55_road
http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=381
 
If 'money to build' is no object, some people might try anything.
That said, due to ongoing maintenance costs and ventilation requirements for any operational tunnel in day-to-day use, it would make sense to me to keep any tunnel as short as possible, meaning Dover-Calais would for me be a better site to build any further UK-continental Europe tunnels than either of the routes mooted in the opening post.
 
Putting half the investment into a high quality fast ferry service would do the job better at these distances and given that the geology won't allow a true tunnel. One problem with ferries is that they are established by undercapitalised companies trying to do a safe job at minimum cost not maximum effect. Cross channel ferry experience is that a ship gives the best return as they can carry lorries and cars which is the main source of customers. Perhaps one could revive the train ferry for containers? The high speed alternatives tried just could not carry the necessary vehicles.

Better purpose built fast turn around ferry ports and more economical faster ferries would be a better spend for your money.

Don't even think of a 300 kph ekranoplan crossing slow international shipping in one of the busiest bits of sea on the planet. It was bad enough with 60 knot hovercrafts.
 
If 'money to build' is no object, some people might try anything.

That said, due to ongoing maintenance costs and ventilation requirements for any operational tunnel in day-to-day use, it would make sense to me to keep any tunnel as short as possible, meaning Dover-Calais would for me be a better site to build any further UK-continental Europe tunnels than either of the routes mooted in the opening post.
If money was no object how about a huge pontoon bridge carrying a high speed railway and a 6-lane motorway with the change from right to left in the middle! That solves the ventilation problem.

When its finished the factory that was built (at huge expense) to make the pontoons could then build similar bridges to the Isle of Wight, to the Isle of Mann and Stranraer to Larne. Further afield the Strait of Gibraltar, Sicily to mainland Italy (might avoid the earthquake problem that has prevented a tunnel or conventional bridge being built) and Corsica to Sardinia are possibilities if money is no object.

I'm only joking, well sort of.
 
If money was no object how about a huge pontoon bridge carrying a high speed railway and a 6-lane motorway with the change from right to left in the middle! That solves the ventilation problem.
I think the first large container ship heading out of the Channel will adequately ventilate the pontoon bridge....................
 
I think the first large container ship heading out of the Channel will adequately ventilate the pontoon bridge....................
I was wondering who would be first to say that.

You really meant chop it in half. It would be adequately ventilated in the first place.

But to be serious, the pontoon sections would have to be massive. They would have enough clearance for ships to pass beneath them and strong enough to withstand the occasional and inevitable collisions. In the case of catastrophic damage to one of the sections, the modular nature of the bridge would allow the damaged sections to be removed and replaced by spare sections.

Though as the financial cost of makes this near ASB, I will pre-empt you by saying that the day after the bridge is completed a terrorist group hijacks the world's 100 largest super tankers and rams it with them en masse (which means all of them at the same time).

Remember that I was only joking, well sort of.
 
The real problem with this is that if you want to take people (presumably mostly lorries) by train from Ramsgate to Zeebrugge then the cheapest way of doing it - by enough that you can have all of the passengers swilling free champagne and eating caviare for the entire journey - is to run the train from Ramsgate to Dover, then take the existing Chunnel, and then run a train from Dover to Zeebrugge. Building an additional tunnel is massively expensive and the total journey time is probably higher due to the lower speed limits in the tunnel than on the surface.
 
I think the first large container ship heading out of the Channel will adequately ventilate the pontoon bridge....................
Don't be silly. Clearly each pontoon has a tower on it, and the roadbed is some 150 ft (50m, say) or so above the water level, thus letting ships pass under.
 
I thought that the pontoon bridge might have a pipeline underneath which will let out a measured amount of bubbles to sink shipping just low enough to pass underneath.

On a more serious note. The only workable geology and distance is in the area of the existing tunnel so boring another would be the best economic and engineering choice though I would still choose to upgrade the ferries across the North Sea. Maybe with a wide sea canal across the south of Denmark straight to the Baltic though God has provided a working alternative to that too.
 
I was wondering who would be first to say that.

You really meant chop it in half. It would be adequately ventilated in the first place.

But to be serious, the pontoon sections would have to be massive. They would have enough clearance for ships to pass beneath them and strong enough to withstand the occasional and inevitable collisions. In the case of catastrophic damage to one of the sections, the modular nature of the bridge would allow the damaged sections to be removed and replaced by spare sections.

Though as the financial cost of makes this near ASB, I will pre-empt you by saying that the day after the bridge is completed a terrorist group hijacks the world's 100 largest super tankers and rams it with them en masse (which means all of them at the same time).

Remember that I was only joking, well sort of.

Supertankers eh?

 

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
Expanding the thread slightly,

how about constructing a causeway between each route and dividing each causeway into 20 mile sections connected by a suspension bridge allowing movement of sea traffic?

Would that work?
 
Expanding the thread slightly,

how about constructing a causeway between each route and dividing each causeway into 20 mile sections connected by a suspension bridge allowing movement of sea traffic?

Would that work?
It could work, but it'd be massively expensive. I just ran some numbers and I'd estimate you'd need in the ballpark of 2 cubic kilometers of fill material for the ~75 mile route from Ramsgate, double that for the route from Felixstowe. That'd be about $37 and $74 billion just in fill material cost. Adding in the actual cost of placing all that material, plus the bridges, and even the Ramsgate route would easily be four or five times more expensive than the Chunnel. The Felixstowe route would be about ten times the cost of Chunnel to build. While they are economically feasible, I can't see any possible economic justification.
 
The main problem is economic feasibility, even if an ASB would give us for free a hyperspace portal transportrer instantly beaming trucks from Ostend to Ramsgate, even from Amsterdam to London City the problem would be to get enough paying traffic to make up for the monthly electticity bill.

The problem is that due to its proximity, Calais has had a 200 year headstart in having the infrastructure not only to ship goods and people to England but also to get the goods from mainland Europe to their harbour in the first place. The rail connections including high-speed bullettrain lines between Calais and Paris are the best in Europe and have numerous tie-ins with lines to every major French and European city. The same is true for higheays. European integration has only helped its attractiveness so far that even before the Chunnel days, the Belgian sealines between Ostend and Dover kept operating at a loss and only survived because they were ownded by the state-owned Belgian railway system. For everyone not enjoying a state-issued railway discount card, it was just easier and cheaper to drive, even to take the train, to Calais and hop on a ferry there.

In short for a tunnel, bridge or even hyperspace portal between England and anywhere not Calais to make sense, you need a.POD wherr not the UK but France voted to leave the European Common Market. The way ot is now, we don't even know how much of the current traffic to Dover will.be allowed next year, never mind whether ot comes.from Calais or straight out of Berlin by Superman Slingshot System
 
realizable if you take time
with 123 km length for Ramsgate and Zeebrugge
and 190 km length for Felixstowe and the Hook of Holland
would be longest undersea and rail way tunnels ever build

for moment the Gotthard Base tunnel with 57.09km is longest in World
and Seikan railway tunnel 53.85km is longest undersea tunnel

Channel Tunnel was open for public in 1994 after 6 years construction,
Ramsgate - Zeebrugge Tunnel would take 17 years work
Felixstowe - the Hook of Holland tunnel would take 23 years to build
 
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