Top 10 longest road and rail tunnels in the world

Tunnels, railway or automobile, are built to connect cities located on different banks of a reservoir, on different sides of a mountain range, etc.

In most cases, construction involves enormous difficulties, but this does not prevent engineers from designing amazing roads, the distance of which can exceed the distance from Moscow to Zvenigorod.

In this compilation, we will talk about the ten longest road and rail tunnels in the world.

10 Lördal Tunnel in Norway (24 m)

Lerdal Tunnel in Norway is located in the west of the country and connects the communes of Laerdal and Aurland. Its construction began in 1995 and lasted 5 years: during this time, workers managed to build a road through mountains up to 1 meters high.

The tunnel is divided into 4 approximately equal sections by three grottoes (artificial caves), which are the main design feature. The caves were made so that drivers tired of many hours of driving could rest and relax a little in order to continue the journey with renewed vigor.

9. Iwate-Ichinose in Japan (25 m)

Tunnel Iwate-Itinose It is located 545 km from Tokyo Station on the Tohoku Shinkansen Line, halfway between the cities of Morioko and Hachinohe. It was launched in 2002 along with the railway line.

The maximum depth is about 200 meters, which makes it one of the deepest in the world. Initially, it was this tunnel that had the longest length (of the land ones), until in 2007 it was bypassed by the Swiss Lötschberg, which we will discuss in more detail below.

8. Hakkoda in Japan (26 m)

It is located in the central Aomori prefecture in northern Japan. It passes through the Hakkoda mountain range and links the village of Tenmabayashi with the city of Aomori.

Tunnel Hakkoda It is part of the northern extension of the Tohoku Shinkansen high-speed rail and is located between Shichinohe Towada and Shin Aomori stations.

The construction of the tunnel began in 1998 and continued until 2005, when it was partially put into operation. All work was completed in 2010.

7. Taihangshan in China (27 m)

Taihanshan is the third longest mountain railway tunnel in northern China after the New Guanjiao and Western Qinling tunnels. This is a double track tunnel that was built to allow the China Passenger Railway to cross the Taihang Mountains. The length of the left track is 27 m (839 miles) and the right track is 17,298 m (27 miles).

After the opening of the Taihang Tunnel and the construction of a high-speed railway, the travel time from Shijiazhuang to Taiyuan has been reduced many times: now you can get from one settlement to another not in 6 hours, as before, but in just an hour. Construction began on June 11, 2005, and the opening took place on December 22, 2007.

6. Guadarrama in Spain (28 m)

The Sierra de Guadarrama is a mountain range that forms the main eastern section of the mountain range system along the central part of the Iberian Peninsula. It is located between the Sierra de Gredos in the province of Ávila and the Sierra de Aillon in the province of Guadalajara.

Tunnel Guddaram runs through it and is intended for the movement of railway trains. It consists of two pipes: the western pipe is 28 m long and the eastern pipe is 407 m, which makes Guadarrama the longest in Spain, except for line 12 of the Madrid metro.

5. New Guan Jiao in China (32 m)

New Guan Jiao is located on Line 2 of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway in the Guang Jiao Mountains of Qinghai Province. It is a two-channel railway tunnel with two roads. The total length is 32,645 km (20,285 mi), making it the longest railway tunnel in China.

The Chinese Institute of Early Research and Design was responsible for the creation of the project, whose employees tried to make it as suitable as possible for the parallel movement of two trains at speeds up to 160 kilometers per hour (99 miles per hour).

It was assumed that the total duration of construction will be 5 years, but as a result, it was finally put into operation after 7 years.

4. Lötschberg in Switzerland (34 m)

line Lochberg located in Switzerland: it connects the city of Spitz in the district of Bern with Brig in the district of Valais. The construction of the railway track in these places was started in the middle of the 1859th century: already in XNUMX, the first railway from Bern to Münsingen and Thun was opened here.

In the future, the line was repeatedly increased, expanded and modernized, until in 1913 it acquired a finished look. Of course, modern trains do not run on the rails of 1913, but the bulk of the construction work was carried out over a century ago, which makes the Lötschberg tunnel the oldest in our collection.

This place impresses not only with its length, but also with its beauty: the Bichtal bridge, the Ligelkin and Kander viaducts, the majestic Bernese Alps. If you go this way for the first time, then it is categorically not recommended to sleep: you will not see such splendor outside the window anywhere else.

3. Eurotunnel in France and Great Britain (50 m)

The railway tunnel links England’s Folkestone and Kent with France’s Coquelles and Pas de Calais near Calais in northern France. This is the only fixed connection between the islands of Great Britain and continental Europe.

At its lowest point, the tunnel runs 75 m below the seabed and 115 m below sea level. Train speed limit Eurotunnel is 160 kilometers per hour. After it was opened in 1994, it became possible to get to Paris from London in just 2 hours and 15 minutes, although the trains are no more than 35 minutes in the tunnel itself.

Interesting fact: in 1802, the French mining engineer Albert Mathieu-Favier put forward a proposal to build a tunnel under the English Channel with oil lamp lighting for the movement of horse-drawn carts, and he also wanted to build an artificial island in the middle of the channel for changing horses. Mathieu-Favier’s design called for a two-level structure with an upper tunnel used for transport and a lower one for underground watercourses. The project was never implemented, but subsequently the developments of Mathieu-Favier were used by his successors.

2. Seikan in Japan (53 m)

Seikan slightly longer than the Eurotunnel and has a section of 23,3 km under the seabed (total length of the underwater section is 37,5 km).

it’s the same the deepest tunnel: it goes down 240 meters. Its implementation required a budget of 538,4 billion yen (about $3,6 billion), and Seikan was built from 1971 to 1983, although it was put into operation only in 1988.

1. Gotthard Tunnel in Switzerland (57 m)

A European rail tunnel through the Alps in Switzerland, opened on June 1, 2016, broke the length record that had long been held by Seikan.

It is part of the New Alpine Rail Link (NRLA) project, which also includes the Ceneri Base Tunnel to the south (scheduled to open at the end of 2020) and the Lötschberg we have already mentioned.

If we calculate the total length Gotthard, including pedestrian and service passages, the figure is even more impressive – 153,4 km.