The Eysturoyartunnilin is a large infrastructure project which connects the island of Streymoy to the island of Eysturoy through a sub-sea road tunnel under the Tangafjørður sound in the Faroe Islands. It also crosses the southern part of Skálafjørður and connects the towns of Runavík on the eastern side and Strendur on the western side of the fjord. Altogether, the three-branched sub-sea tunnel measures 11.24 kilometres long, including an underwater roundabout. Construction costs are estimated to be around a billion DKK.Runavík#cite note-7| Drilling commenced on 21 February 2017 and the final blast was made on 7June 2019.
History
The idea for the Eysturoyartunnilin emerged during the construction of the Vágatunnilin and Norðoyatunnilin, in 2002 and 2006 respectively, which heralded a new look on domestic transport and regional development. In 2006, the private company P/F Skálafjarðartunnilin was founded to build this tunnel. Due to the financial crisis, it took the stakeholders several years to materialize the plans and get political support. The tunnel has been included in the 2012 national mobility plan, which abandoned the name Skálafjarðartunnilin and now exclusively names it Eysturoyartunnilin. In June 2013, another private company, P/F Eysturoyartunnilin, was established in order to pursue a deal between the Faroese national government, the Faroese insurance company LÍV and the Danish-owned Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. CIP had made secret arrangements with the Faroese minister for transport, Kári P. Højgaard, who had to resign in early September as this came out. This led to a small political crisis. In 2015, after the outcomes of an official inquiry, the cabinet of Kaj Leo Johannesen had to call for early elections. Both P/F Skálafjarðartunnilin and P/F Eysturoyartunnilin were liquidated in 2015, after circa two years of idling. In the aftermath of the political crisis of 2013 though, a special commission drafted a proposal for a public rather than private solution. This proposal was supported by all parties and led in 2014 to the establishment of a public company, P/F Eystur- og Sandoyartunlar. This company, owned entirely by the Ministry of Transport, builds, owns and manages both the Eysturoyartunnil and the Sandoyartunnil. NCC was contracted to carry out the construction works.
Construction
On 8 November 2016, a deal was struck with the Scandinavian construction company NCC about constructing the Eysturoy tunnel as well as the Sandoy tunnel. The company began with construction on the Eysturoy tunnel, and once the drilling of the Eysturoy tunnel has finished, NCC will start drilling the Sandoy tunnel, whilst finishing off the Eysturoy tunnel. The contract for both tunnels is for 2,073 million DKK, whilst the overall cost for both tunnels is estimated at around 2,600 million DKK. The construction of the roads leading to the two portals of the Eysturoy Tunnel started early in 2016 near the village of Hvítanes, and in the village of Strendur on Eysturoy, where they filled out a part of the sea near land, in order to build a roundabout there, so the traffic from the tunnel can lead to the roundabout. The drilling of the tunnel itself started on 21 February from the Strendur side and on 27 April 2017 from the Hvítanes side. The Strendur team reached the underwater roundabout section on 4December 2017. By that day 3,059 metres had been dug from both sides combined. With the first leg and roundabout completed, a third drilling team started, with two teams on the Hvítanes-roundabout leg working towards each other and one from the roundabout to Saltnes. The last blast was shot on 7June 2019, after which a number of months is used for road building and safety. The current planned date of opening is in December 2020 or early 2021.
Specifications
The tunnel is a two-laned undersea tunnel that has three tubes which meet at an underwater roundabout -72.6 meters below the surface of the Skálafjørður fjord. The tunnel is 2,153 metres long from the entrance at Rókini in Saltnes to the roundabout, and the distance from Sjógv at Strendur to the roundabout is 1,625 metres. The main branch from Tórshavn to the roundabout measures 7,460 metres and resurfaces by the village of Hvítanes. This results in an overall road length of 11.238 kilometres, making it the longest sub-sea road tunnel in the world at this time, surpassing Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line, but likely to be surpussed immediately by the new Ryfast and Rogfast sub-sea car tunnels in Norway. In order to increase safety, no inclination in the tunnel is steeper than five per cent and the lowest point is 189.0 metres below the water's surface.
Tolls
The tunnel will be repaid through toll fees. In July 2020 the toll fees were announced, starting at 75 DKK for small cars between Tórshavn and Eysturoy, and 25 DKK for local traffic between Saltnes and Strendur. Tolls are requested for both directions, unlike the Vága- and Norðoyatunnilin, which only request tolls one-way. Experiences from the two existing sub-sea tunnels and the show that traffic in the tunnels is greater than originally expected and the growing number of cars ensures stable funding. However, tunnel tolls will not decrease over time, since the tolls will be used to alleviate finances of the Sandoyartunnilin.
Impact
When the tunnel is finished in 2019-2020, it will significantly reduce travel times to the capital. The tunnel will shorten the travel distance from Tórshavn to Runavík/Strendur from 55 kilometres to 17 kilometres. The 64 minute drive will be shortened to 16 minutes. The drive from Tórshavn to Klaksvík will be shortened from 68 minutes to 36 minutes. Similar to the impacts of the two existing sub-sea tunnels, an intensification of traffic, interaction and regional integration is expected from the increased accessibility, on both the local, regional and national scale. Citizen number and house prices increased in Runavik before opening.
