Road tunnels, Faroe Islands
NCC is building two subsea road tunnels, and a round about, on the Faroe Islands. The contract is divided into two sub-projects with a total contract value of 2,7 billion SEK.
Connecting the Faroe Islands
Shorter traveling time and increased mobility
The two new tunnels connect several of the country’s towns, reducing travel time by more than half and thus increasing the mobility for people, trade and industry and therefore improving conditions for the archipelago’s economy. The distance between the capital, Torshavn, and the town of Strendur, for example, will be shortened from 55 to 17 kilometers.
Both tunnels will be about 11 kilometers long. While the maximum grade of the roadway is five degrees, the lowest point of the tunnels will still be 187 meters below sea level. The tunnels will be drilled through volcanic rock, requiring relatively frequent inspections throughout the construction process.
NCC’s customer is P/E Eystur- og Sandoyartunlar (EST), a company wholly owned by the County Council of the Faroe Islands.
Largest infrastructure project ever
Apart from the two tunnels being built under the seabed, a roundabout is also included in the projects which is the largest ever infrastructure project on the Faroe Islands.
NCC has extensive experience in tunnel construction, with the cutting edge expertise in Norway. In the early 2000s NCC built Vagatunnilin and Nordoyatunnilin on the Faroes Islands, tunnels that have been used and evaluated for over ten years, giving NCC lots of experience and data to construct the two new subsea tunnels, Eysturoy and Sandoy. Several of the key people working on this project were also involved with the two earlier tunnels.
NCC has extensive experience in tunnel construction, and our Norwegian operations possess this cutting-edge expertise. We will be leveraging our experience from the two road tunnels that we built on the Faroe Islands in the early 2000sKenneth Nilsson, Business Area Manager, NCC Infrastructure.
How we work with large projects
About the Faroe islands
The Faroe Islands is an archipelago, consisting of 18 islands, in the North Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between Norway and Iceland. The construction of road tunnels through the steep mountains of the islands began in the 1960s. The archipelago now hosts a total of 19 tunnels. Two of them are subsea tunnels built by NCC in the early 2000s. All other roads between the islands are connected by bridges and ferries.