| The northern opening of the Hallandsås tunnels | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Line | West Coast Line |
| Location | Båstad Municipality, Skåne County |
| Status | Under construction |
| Start | Förslöv |
| End | Båstad |
| Operation | |
| Work begun | 1992 (restart 2003) |
| Opened | 2015 (scheduled) |
| Traffic | Railway |
| Technical | |
| Length | 8.7 km (5.4 mi) |
The Hallandsås Tunnel (Swedish: Hallandsåstunneln), also known as the Hallandsås Ridge Tunnel or Scanlink, is a railway tunnel under construction in Sweden. It will go between the north and the south side of the Hallandsås. 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 and Halmstad in southwestern Sweden. When finished, it will enhance the connection between the cities of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Copenhagen, Denmark.
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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 bottleneck and the passenger train service between Gothenburg/Oslo and Malmö, 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 and the Swedish Rail Administration in the 1980s.
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-Gil" was used during construction. This substance was linked to the death of nearby livestock. Rhoca-Gil contains acrylamide, a toxic chemical that is mutagenic and possibly carcinogenic. The main contractor, Skanska, 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 and Swedish Railways 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).[1]
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.[2]
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, 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.[3]
Cost overrun has been large. The cost was expected in 1992 to be 1 billion Swedish krona (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.[4]