Unscientific American

The cover of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (SA) “Extreme Engineering” special edition has a cover advertising “Megaprojects” and among them “the LONGEST tunnel.” Turns out to be an article about the Oresund bridge/tunnel crossing over the neck of the Baltic Sea between Denmark and Sweden. It is a grand project but of course at 4km (2.5mi) the tunnel is nowhere near the world’s longest road tunnel. The old St Gotthard in the Swiss Alps is 16.9km and soon the Laerdal Tunnel on the E16 between Oslo and Bergen Norway will open at 24.5km. Among undersea tunnels longer ones are the 9.5km Aqua-Line tunnel under Tokyo Bay (which has 4.4km of bridge also) and the 6.6km Westerschelde tunnel in the Netherlands on the approaches to the port of Antwerp.

The Oresund tunnel may be among the longest immersed tube tunnels constructed since the longer ones, whether under water or land, tend to be driven tunnels. In the text the article says the Oresund tunnel is the world’s longest tunnel combining road and rail in the one structure. It may be the shortest as well because we can’t think of another one. Properly trendy lingo would have had the Oresund dubbed “the world’s first multimodal tunnel.”

Get with it guys.