The Eiksund tunnel ( no, Eiksundtunnelen) is an

undersea tunnel An underwater tunnel is a tunnel which is partly or wholly constructed under the sea or a river. They are often used where building a bridge or operating a ferry link is unviable, or to provide competition or relief for existing bridges or ferry li ...

Møre og Romsdal Møre og Romsdal (; en, Møre and Romsdal) is a county in the northernmost part of Western Norway. It borders the counties of Trøndelag, Innlandet, and Vestland. The county administration is located in the town of Molde, while Ålesund is the ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

, which runs under the

Vartdalsfjorden Vartdalsfjorden is a fjord (more technically, a strait) in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It begins at the Storfjorden and Sulafjorden in the northeast and flows through the municipalities of Hareid and Ulstein on the northern shore of the fj ...

connecting the

municipalities A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

Ørsta is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Møre og Romsdal Counties of Norway, county, Norway. It is part of the Sunnmøre Districts of Norway, region of Western Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the Ørsta ( ...

and

Ulstein Ulstein is a municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the Sunnmøre region. The commercial and administrative centre of Ulstein is the town of Ulsteinvik. The municipality occupies the western half of the island of Hareid ...

. The tunnel is long and reaches a depth of below sea level, and was the deepest

in the world until Norway's

Rogaland Rogaland () is a Counties of Norway, county in Western Norway, bordering the North Sea to the west and the counties of Vestland to the north, Vestfold og Telemark to the east and Agder to the east and southeast. In 2020, it had a population of 47 ...

county opened its deep

Ryfast Ryfast is a subsea tunnel system in Rogaland county, Norway. The tunnel system is part of the Norwegian National Road 13, and it runs between the city of Stavanger in Stavanger Municipality, under a large fjord, and the area of Solbakk in the mu ...

tunnel system in December 2019.

Localities served

The tunnel was built as part of a large project including three tunnels and a bridge connecting several islands to the mainland. The bridge–tunnel complex serves the municipalities of Herøy, Sande,

Hareid Hareid is a municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the Sunnmøre region. The administrative centre is the village of Hareid. The other main population centers are Brandal and Hjørungavåg. The municipality is situ ...

, and

Volda Volda is a municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the Sunnmøre region. The administrative centre is the village of Volda. Other villages in the municipality include Dravlaus, Fyrde, Straumshamn, Leira, Bjørke, and ...

, which together have over 40,000 inhabitants. The

Eiksund Bridge The Eiksund Bridge ( no, Eiksundbrua) is a cantilever bridge in Ulstein Municipality in the Sunnmøre region of Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. The bridge is connected to the Eiksund Tunnel as part of the ''Eiksund Sambandet'' which joins sev ...

joins

Hareidlandet Hareidlandet is an island in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. The island is divided between Hareid Municipality and Ulstein Municipality. The island has a population of 13,030 (as of 2015). The island is mentioned by Snorri in his reports abou ...

island and the village of

Eiksund Eiksund is a village in the municipality of Ulstein, in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is located on the southern tip of the island of Hareidlandet. The small island of Eika lies just off the shore from Eiksund. The village is located ab ...

with the nearby island of Eika. The Eiksund Tunnel begins at the south end of the bridge (on Eika island) goes under the Vartdalsfjorden and connects to the mainland near the village of

. These three structures are a part of Norwegian County Road 653 (Fv653), a highway that links Fv61 between Ulstein and Herøy to the

European route E39 European route E39 is the designation of a north–south road in Norway and Denmark from Klett, just south of Trondheim, to Aalborg via Bergen, Stavanger and Kristiansand. In total, there are nine ferries, more than any other single road in Eu ...

highway between Ørsta and Volda. Eiksundtunnelen01

Construction

The long

and the long Helgehorn Tunnel were built along with the tunnel. The total cost of the tunnel was about . The tunnel was originally intended to be opened to the public in July 2007, but numerous delays pushed the date back to December 2007 and then eventually to 2008. The tunnel was opened to traffic on 23 February 2008. The Eiksund Tunnel is an undersea rock tunnel created by

drilling and blasting Drilling and blasting is the controlled use of explosives and other methods, such as gas pressure blasting pyrotechnics, to break rock for excavation. It is practiced most often in mining, quarrying and civil engineering such as dam, tunnel o ...

, with 1,300 tonnes of explosive used. 660,000 cubic metres of rock were removed during construction.

Usage

The tunnel carries two lanes on the Ørsta side, and two lanes + one crawling lane on the Eiksund side. Prior to construction the average daily traffic through the Eiksund Tunnel was projected to be 1,000 vehicles per day (VPD). The ease of crossing the fjord, however, rapidly increased traffic to 2200 VPD. When the tunnel was fully financed after six years and became toll-free, traffic jumped again to 2880 VPD.

Incidents

On 28 June 2009, there was a severe accident in the tunnel, leaving five men dead. A young driver with three male passengers in their 20s was thought to have been driving at around 150-200 km/h (90-120 mph) when he hit the side of the tunnel and flipped his car over, which then struck an oncoming vehicle carrying only its driver.

References

External links