Hallandsås tunnel

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The red and white line shows the new railway line in the tunnel, the black and white line the previous route
Construction site at the south portal of the Hallandsås tunnel (2007)
Entrance at the north end of the tunnel (2010)

The Hallandsåstunnel is a tunnel in Sweden that opened on December 8, 2015 and went into operation on December 13, 2015 , which enables rail traffic on the Västkustbana between Gothenburg and Lund through the Hallandsåsen mountain range in southern Sweden . He came to dubious notoriety in the 1990s due to an environmental scandal.

The construction work for the approximately 8.5 kilometers long two-tube base tunnel between the villages of Förslöv and Båstad began in 1992, stopped in the wake of the 1997 environmental scandal and only resumed in 2005. The breakthrough in the first (eastern) tunnel tube was achieved on August 25, 2010 and the breakthrough in the second (western) tunnel tube on September 4, 2013.

history

In June 1991, the Swedish government decided to provide part-financing of 900 million Swedish kronor to drill a railway tunnel through Hallandsåsen, which will reduce travel time on the west coast between Malmö and Gothenburg and increase line capacity. The planned year of completion was 1997.

Environmental scandal

In the course of the construction work, several major problems arose that severely delayed further construction. In 1996, drilling was switched to blasting. In order to get water ingress under control, the sealant Rhoca-Gil was used from March 1997 , which contains acrylamide , among other things . Part of it ended up unpolymerized in the tunnel sewage, the discharge of which into local waters led to fish deaths. The action of acrylamide as a neurotoxin led to paralysis of three cows who had drunk water from a local stream. In investigations carried out immediately afterwards, acrylamide poisoning of varying severity was found in all construction workers examined.

The use of Rhoca-Gil was immediately discontinued. The Swedish government put the tunnel project on hold for several years.

Construction work

In November 2005 the work was resumed after previous test bores with the support of experienced tunnel experts, including from Austria and Germany. A closed tunnel boring machine was used and the tunnel was lined with sealing tubbings . Recurring water ingress was countered with conventional methods; the rock was freeze-solidified to penetrate the critical Mölleback zone. The total construction costs (adjusted for inflation in 2008) are given as 10.5 billion Swedish kronor.

On August 25, 2010, the eastern tube was completely driven. Operation of the tunnel boring machine for the remaining 2.5 km of the west tube began on March 1, 2011. On August 22, 2011, 570 m of the west tube were completed, while 1,898 m had to be drilled. By the end of 2012, 1,328 m of the west tube had been completed, i.e. 70.8%. The breakthrough of the western tube took place on September 4, 2013.

costs

At the beginning of the project, total costs were estimated at around one billion crowns. But by the time the first construction work was stopped, costs of around 2 billion crowns had been incurred, with barely half of the tunnel route being completed. At the resumption of construction work, four billion crowns were estimated to complete the tunnels. The total cost of the railway line through the Hallandsås Tunnel was around 10.8 billion Swedish kronor.

Individual evidence

  1. a b Hallandsåstunneln - only rullar tågen! Trafikverket , accessed December 20, 2015 (Swedish).
  2. Trafikverket: Kortfakta om Hallandsås
  3. ^ Hallandsås tunnel status. trafikverket.se, archived from the original on April 6, 2012 ; Retrieved April 14, 2018 (Swedish).
  4. ^ Hallandsås Project updates, week 51 . In: The Hallandsås Project . Trafikverket. Retrieved on December 30, 2012.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.trafikverket.se  
  5. http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article17406217.ab
  6. ^ Swedish Rail Administration presents new schedule for the Hallandsås tunnel, Banverket, 2008-11-09. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved December 20, 2015 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.banverket.se

Coordinates: 56 ° 21 ′ 41.6 ″  N , 12 ° 48 ′ 17.9 ″  E