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Plans to link Europe to Africa via a tunnel are gathering pace. The Moroccan government has been holding talks with its Spanish counterparts to start the project, which would consist of a railway beneath the Strait of Gibraltar carrying freight, passengers and cars. Work is expected to start in 2008.
The ferry between Tangiers in Morocco and southern Spain is the traditional way people have travelled from Africa to Europe. But that could change if a tunnel is built between the two continents. If that is the case, Africa and Europe, which split apart millions of years ago, could soon be joined together again permanently via a tunnel. The man entrusted with designing the tunnel is the veteran Swiss engineer Giovanni Lombardi. He has already been involved with many great projects, including the Gothard Pass tunnel and the Mont Blanc tunnel in Switzerland. But he says this one may be his toughest assignment yet. "No works in the world compare to this one," he said. "There are a lot of challenges. First of all the sea at this point is 300m (1,000ft) deep - about five to six times deeper than the Channel Tunnel [linking the UK and France].
"Then there is the geological conditions. There are quite a lot of tectonic movements betweens the African and the European plates. So there would be quite a lot of movements in the earth, of stresses and so on."  The exploratory equipment looks basic |
On a cliff top outside Tangiers stands a rusty frame with cables and weights. It may not look very much but this is the start of a shaft that descends 300m below sea level, and this is where scientists and engineers are examining the sea bed to see how difficult it will be to drill into the rock. The team is lead by engineer Jillali Chafik from the Moroccan research team SNED. "At the moment we are carrying out the last studies into the sea bed which hold the key for the railway tunnel," he said. "These studies should be finished by the end of 2007. We are looking at how the tunnel will actually work and the amount of traffic that will use the tunnel, once it starts." Political will The blueprint for the tunnel envisages two tubes for train lines beneath the Strait of Gibraltar, with an emergency or service tunnel in between them.  The tunnel would run deep beneath the Mediterranean |
Like the Eurotunnel project, the trains would carry passengers as well as cars. It has been talked about since the early 1980s, but the Moroccans say this time there is the political will. They are now in the final stages of the feasibility study which will be completed by the end of the year, with construction starting soon after. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero recently visited Morocco and said that Spain was fully committed to the project. |
