The Fehmarn Belt fixed link (, ) or Fehmarn Belt tunnel is an under-construction immersed tunnel, which will connect the Danish island of Lolland with the German island of Fehmarn, crossing the Fehmarn Belt in the Baltic Sea. The tunnel is intended to be a major widening of the connection between mainland Europe and Scandinavia.
The tunnel is planned to become the world's longest road and rail (combination) tunnel and will directly replace a heavily travelled ferry service of the "Bird flight line" (German: Vogelfluglinie; Danish: Fugleflugtslinjen) operated by Scandlines. The tunnel will provide a direct link from northern Germany to Lolland, with Fehmarn connected with the German mainland by the Fehmarn Sound Bridge and Lolland connected by a tunnel and bridges with the Danish island of Zealand, which includes Copenhagen, via the island of Falster. The Fehmarn Belt project will therefore provide a more direct and efficient connection between Germany and Zealand (which in turn is connected with the Swedish mainland via the Øresund Bridge), compared to the existing road-rail link that is the detoured Great Belt Bridge via Jutland and Funen. Travel time between Lolland and Fehmarn is to be reduced from 45 minutes by ferry (excluding waiting and boarding time) to 10 minutes by car and seven minutes by train. The electrified high-speed rail line will be capable of reaching .
Designed and financed by Danish state-owned Femern A/S, the tunnel was approved in 2015 with a construction budget of 52.6 billion krone (equivalent to US$8.2 billion), making it the largest traffic investment in Denmark's history, which will be partly recouped by tolling the tunnel. Germany plans to pay a further €800 million to connect the crossing to its motorway network. The Fehmarnbelt tunnel is expected to be completed in 2031.
History Bridge proposal Since 1963, the German island of Fehmarn has been connected to the mainland through the Fehmarn Sound Bridge. Since then, connection to the Danish island of Lolland has been provided by a regular ferry service across the strait. This started the discussion about a fixed link across the strait. By the late 1990s, feasibility studies had been carried out for constructing a bridge. Ideas involved a bridge carrying both a four-lane motorway and two electrified rail tracks. This solution was for years regarded as the most likely scheme and detailed plans were drawn up. The Fehmarn Belt bridge was originally expected to be completed by 2018.
However, in late 2010, after further feasibility studies, the Danish project planners declared that an immersed tunnel would instead present fewer construction risks and would cost about the same. The project's cost had grown to €7.4 billion after initially being estimated at €5.5 billion in 2007.
The bridge would have been about long, comprising three cable-stayed spans. The four pillars in the substructure of the bridge would probably have been about tall, with vertical clearance about above sea level, allowing ocean-going ships to pass beneath it. The design of the bridge links was being carried out by the Dissing+Weitling company for its aesthetical features and by the COWI and Obermeyer companies for their civil engineering aspects. The proposed design would have carried four motorway lanes and two railway tracks.
Tunnel solution Although originally conceived as a bridge, Femern A/S (the Danish state-owned company tasked with designing and planning the link) announced in December 2010 that a tunnel was preferable, and the tunnel idea received support from a large majority of the Danish Parliament in January 2011. The completion date was revised in 2012 to 2021, in 2014 to 2024, in 2015 to 2028, in 2020 to 2029, and in 2026 to 2032.
In February 2015, the draft bill for the construction was introduced to the Danish parliament, and the Danish Government submitted an application for DKK 13 billion (€1.7 billion) in EU grants, supported by Germany and Sweden."Analyse: Femern Bælt-forbindelsen gør Danmark og Europa rigere " Report, 1MB . Danish Ministry of Transport, 8 January 2015. Accessed: 8 January 2015.Fermern A/S: What is the status of Femern A/S’ work on the tunnel under the Fehmarnbelt? Linked 6 March 2015 In June 2015, €589 million of EU funding was awarded to Denmark by the European Commission under its Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) scheme, allowing the tunnel project to go ahead. In March 2017, the operating company announced the sign-up of subcontractors for the project.
On 13 December 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in favour of Scandlines in Case T‑630/15 regarding state aid.
The European Commission claimed on 28 September 2018 that there has been no unlawful aid. Action regarding that has been brought before court in January 2019 in Case T-7/19.
Project The project is comparable in size to other Danish bridges at Øresund Bridge and the Great Belt Bridge. According to a report released on 30 November 2010 by Femern A/S (a subsidiary of the Danish state-owned Sund & Bælt Holding A/S), the company tasked with designing and planning the link between Denmark and Germany, the corridor for the alignment of the link has now been determined and will be sited in a corridor running east of the ferry ports of Puttgarden and Rødbyhavn. Newsletter from Femern A/S
The Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link and its double tracks will shorten the rail journey from Hamburg to Copenhagen from four hours and 40 minutes to two hours and 30 minutes. According to current plans there will be one passenger train and two freight trains in each direction per hour. The highway between Copenhagen and Hamburg is already a motorway except for in Germany that is a two-lane expressway. The narrow Fehmarn Sound Bridge will be replaced by a new Fehmarn Sound Tunnel with a four-lane motorway and double-track railway.Deutsche Bahn. Entscheidung zur neuen Fehmarnsundquerung. (in German) Retrieved 11 June 2021
Design The tunnel consists of 79 standard elements with a length of in a design similar to the Drogden trench, with two road tubes, one emergency tube and two rail tubes. Additionally, there are ten service elements with a length of but both wider and higher with a subfloor (basement) to house technical equipment.
Financing When the Danish Folketing (parliament) ratified the project in March 2009, its cost was estimated at 42 billion DKK (€5 billion). This cost included €1.5 billion for other improvements such as electrifying and improving of railway from single-track to double-track on the Danish side. In 2011 this was increased to a total of €5.5 billion (at 2008 prices). On top of this there will be cost of at least €1 billion for the German rail connection, which will be paid by the German government.
The Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link will be financed by state-guaranteed loans, which will be paid by the road and train tolls. Denmark will be solely responsible for guaranteeing the funding of the project at an estimated cost of 35 billion kroner or (€4.7 billion) and German participation will be limited to the development of the land-based facilities on the German side.Tiefensee: Durchbruch für feste Fehmarnbeltquerung, German ministry of transport 29 June 2007 The government of Denmark will own the fixed link outright, will be allowed to keep tolls after the loans have been repaid, and will enjoy any employment opportunities at the toll station. The fees are also planned to pay for the Danish railway upgrading.
On the German side, the road will be widened to four lanes and the railway to double track and, according to the treaty, paid by the German government without a toll for users.
The European Union has designated this project as one of the 30 prioritised transport infrastructure projects (TEN-T). It has committed to a €600 million to €1.2 billion subsidy. The project is expected to have a five percent rate of return for Europe. Construction estimates covered the period from 1 April 1998 until 2021.
Land connections New Storstrømmen and Fehmarn Sound links Two new links are planned. One about long at the Fehmarn Sound and one slightly more than long at Storstrømmen. According to the 2008 Danish–German treaty, the bridges did not have to be replaced,Tekniske løsningsmodeller for de danske landanlæg and the double-track railway construction in Germany may be delayed by up to seven years. Because of its bad condition, a replacement of the Storstrøm Bridge has been contracted and is slated for completion in 2026.Danish Road Directorate: https://www.vejdirektoratet.dk/side/storstromsbroen The Schleswig-Holstein State Government announced in 2013 it envisioned the construction of a new Fehmarn Sound link or an upgrade of the current Fehmarn Sound Bridge, since it considered the current bridge – with two lanes for road traffic and one track for rail traffic – to be a bottleneck for the German hinterland connection. On 3 March 2020, the German Federal Ministry of Transport, the State of Schleswig-Holstein and Deutsche Bahn announced that a new 1.7 km long immersed Fehmarn Sound Tunnel (German: Fehmarnsundtunnel) with four road lanes and two rail tracks, costing approximately 714 million euros, is planned to be built by 2028, while the current bridge will be preserved for pedestrians, cyclists and slow road traffic.
Railway axis Fehmarn Belt
The Fehmarn Belt Tunnel's railway is the central section of the 'Railway axis Fehmarn Belt', which is Priority Project 20 of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) that seeks to establish a high-speed rail line Copenhagen–Hamburg. In the north, it connects to the Øresund Bridge/Drogden Tunnel (Priority Project 11) and the Nordic Triangle railway/road axis (Priority Project 12), and in the south to Bremen and Hanover. The full line currently under construction consists of several new railways to be built and old railways to be upgraded, to achieve at least a maximum speed of on all sections: Copenhagen–Ringsted Line, opened on 31 May 2019, since 2023 operating at . Sydbanen (Ringsted–Rødbyhavn), new tracks to be laid by 2021, to be electrified to reach by 2024. Fehmarn Belt Tunnel (Rødbyhavn–Puttgarden), , to be completed in 2028. (since revised) Puttgarden–Lübeck railway, to be electrified and upgraded to reach up from the current . The new Fehmarn Sound Tunnel (to be completed in 2028) is part of this section. Lübeck–Hamburg railway, to be upgraded to reach .
Tunnel characteristics Underwater tunnels are either bored or immersed: tunnel boring is common for deepwater tunnels longer than 4 or , and immersion is commonly used for tunnels that cross relatively shallow waters. Immersion involves dredging a trench across the seafloor, laying a foundation bed of sand or gravel, and then lowering precast concrete tunnel sections into the excavation and covering it with a protective layer of backfill several metres thick.
An immersed tunnel is planned for the Fehmarn Belt. At 17.6 km (10.9 mi), it will be the longest ever constructed, surpassing the current largest immersed tube tunnel, which spans 6.75 km (4.19 mi) across the Pearl River Estuary in China as part of the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge. On 30 November 2010, Denmark's Femern A/S project manager announced it had selected immersed tunnel design submitted by the Ramboll, Arup, and TEC consortium. According to the senior project managers, as well as being the world's longest immersed tunnel, it will be the "world's longest combined road and rail tunnel; the world's longest under water tunnel for road; the deepest immersed tunnel with road and rail traffic; and the second deepest concrete immersed tunnel." The size of the project is about five times the tunnel part of the Øresund Link between Denmark and Sweden, currently the "longest immersed concrete tunnel."