A Place to Stand

The costed tunnels our government have compared a new Forth crossing to are (PP 6 & ):
PROJECT COST
Madrid M30 Motorway €792
Kuala Lumpur, SMART US $514M
Dublin Port Tunnel €752M
A86 Paris €2.23Bn
Westerschelde, Hollan €726M
Chongming South RMB 12.3 Bn (app£120M)

Jack Lynch Tunnel Ire IR£70M
Warnow Tunnel, Germany €224M
Öresund Crossing, Denmark DN KR 3.8Bn (app£340m)
Medway Tunnel, UK. £80M

It will be apparent that, despite many of them being far longer than the Forth crossing, these average in the low hundreds of millions. Not comparable with the £4673 price given for a Forth Tunnel & then used as the justification for spending £2.3 bn on a bridge. What may not immediately strike you is that they have omitted any comparison with the Norwegian tunnels which, since Norway has been building hundreds of kilometres of tunnels & it is a country Scotland is regularly compared to may seem strange. One explanation is that the Norwegian costs are so low as much as a thousandth of the cost we are told is required, that even our government is embarrassed. If there is another explanation perhaps somebody can give it.

The Norwegians are world champion tunnelers. They build road tunnels longer and cheaper than anyone else...

the most extraordinary feat of the Norwegians is their low tunnel costs. The Laerdal will cost $130m, just $2.5m/lane-km ($4m/lane-mi.)[£1.7m/km] Other tunnels are regularly built in Norway for $3m to $4m/lane-km.[£2 - 2.6million] In California or Washington DC the environmental studies and public hearings would cost that much

Looks like in Scotland such studies & hearings & mysteriously inexplicable other costs would cost 100s of times as much.

Labels: Forth crossing, Government parasitism, Science/technology, Scottish politics