Spain and Morocco agree to rail tunnel under Gibraltar strait

Spain and Morocco agree to rail tunnel under Gibraltar strait
By Vicky Short
5 January 2004

The governments of Spain and Morocco have taken a further step towards the building of a rail tunnel that will connect Europe and Africa, in what will be a historic technological feat. The Spanish Minister of Development Francisco Alvarez Cascos was quoted in Arabic News.com as stating that this tunnel will be “in the 21st century what the Suez Canal was in the 19th century and what the Panama Canal was in the 20th century.”

By the time such a tunnel is in place a continuous rail link between the north of Scotland and Africa would be possible.

The agreement signed by Cascos and Moroccan Minister of Equipment and Transport Karim Ghellab is for a programme of engineering tests and studies and it is believed that digging under the strait could begin in five years time. According to the Spanish Transport Minister 27 million euros will be invested in this preliminary stage of geological survey by each of the two countries over the next three years.

It is thought that the tunnel will be 24 miles long, of which 17 miles will lie under the narrow and turbulent waters of the strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. It will descend between 100 and 300 metres under the sea. The most suitable route has initially been established as that between Punta Paloma, 40 kilometres west of Gibraltar, and Punta Malabata, near the Moroccan city of Tangiers. A shorter route to the east that would be only about 12 miles has been dismissed, as it would require boring 900 metres below sea level. The final route and depth will be decided only after detailed geological studies.

--snip--

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/tunn-j05.shtml

Standing at La Linea, the Spanish town bordering Gibraltar, the Atlas mountains of Morocco look tantalizingly close on a clear day, so why not one more way of passage? I am not sure if the feat would surpass the Chunnel across the English Channel, but it would be quite a feat nonetheless, just for the Scotland-Morocco rail connection.

you will now be able to walk from Cape Town to Edinburgh. oh the wonders of the modern age. next up, a tunnel across the bering straits? thereby connecting every inhabited continent?

n/t

um.. more seriously, it might be possible (improbable, I suppose) to construct a series of highway bridges from Peninsular Malaysia to Sumatra -> Java -> Bali --> Lumbok --> Mataram --> Sumbawa --> Flores --> Timor, then some sort of tunnel from Timor to Darwin in Australia. A couple of these single crossings seem to already exist, but not as a whole chain.

there's a bridge over the Suez Canal (which was artifical anyway, of course).