The $12TRN Transatlantic Tunnel Proposal

For over a century, the idea of building a tunnel across the Atlantic ocean has fascinated the minds of visionaries. However, due to cost and feasibility concerns, the idea was always dismissed. Then, in 2003, engineers announced that a transatlantic tunnel was within the realms of possibility. Using a submerged floating tunnel, a connection across the northern Atlantic could potentially be built, linking New York City and London. If constructed, a transatlantic tunnel would be the largest construction project in world history. It would cost approximately 12 trillion dollars, take a century or more to build, and require thousands of workers. It would unite the Old and New Worlds, increasing tourism, business and international cooperation. Unfortunately though, it would come with a list of problems. Construction difficulty, safety hazards and cost issues would make the project incredibly challenging. Despite these issues, one day, a transatlantic tunnel may finally be built.

If you enjoyed this video, please consider subscribing to Futurology for more content!

Thank you to the following sources!

Information

Audio
Storyblocks

Graphics
Statens vegvesen
Crossrail Project
FemernAS
CRRC
Virgin Hyperloop
Delft Hyperloop

[countdown]

Whenever someone mentions hyperloop, you know it's not a serious project

[trolleysquid]

the first route just seems so much better for cost, upkeep, and time creating it. the underwater tunnels also would have the issues of having few places to stop, opposed to being on land. the weather and distance seem like much smaller issues than building underwater

[realhawaiio]

The most ideal route would be tunneling from Quebec to Greenland, Greenland to Iceland, Iceland to Faroe Islands and Faroe Islands to Scotland.
This would be relatively quick to build because you can start from all of the entry points in all of the tunnels at the same time and they are all feasible distances around 300km at most and through largely not deep seabed. This avoids all of these problems mentioned and it would be done with already well known technology used to do the Chunnel or the Honsu-Hokkaido tunnel.
I can't see why this was dismissed straight away at the start of the video, specially with it being tried and tested technology and with making a road through Greenland not being the biggest issue at all, specially when compared to inventing the wheel in terms of suspended tunnels as you suggest in this video.

[marcor]

Even all of this is highly theoreticaly, i think the route would go past Iceland because of the follwing reasons:
1. only 1000m deep sea to cross not 4000m deep.
The current record for a Railwaytunnel is a coverage of 2450m by the Gotthard-Basetunnel in the Swiss alps
2. It would cross the Mid-atlantic ridge in Iceland on land instead of somwhere in the middle of the ocean. So the crossing of this seismic active area happen in a better explored and for observation/maintenance easy to accses area.
3. With Iceland and Greenland there would be two mid-way acesses, so the Tunnel can be built from 6 ends (1: Scotland, Iceland East, Iceland West, Greenland East, Greenland West, Canada) instead of two and it would give two additional entrances for rescue-teams if needed.
The contrapoint of the winterconditions in Iceland and Greenland it would be a small challange to eighter do them underground as well or cover these Sections with protection hull against the conditions

[jacktaggart]

This sounds very futuristic and Jules Verne. The U.S., at this point in time, is incapable of building replacement North River Tunnels from New Jersey to Manhattan's Penn Station. sad to say. The Swiss, on the other hand, invested mightily in their successful new 36 mile Gottard Pass Tunnel System. The mega project described would require staggering international cooperation and very long term sustained funding.

[elliottgussow]

There's a problem with the 100 year construction time. The technology advancements that would take place during that 100 years would make the initial installations obsolete by the time the last section is installed.

[thomasblyth]

Dismissing the route through iceland is silly. It reduces many of the safety concerns listed at the end of the video and construction of the underwater portions would be much easier because of the much closer proximity to land. We already have trains running through harsh environments in the northern Scandinavian peninsula and in extremely cold regions of Siberia. The iceland route also offers regions with a local workforce midway along the route to provide or at least house the maintenance crews which would have to work on the nearby sections of track.

[annoyingguyoninternet]

The 10 hours train will work just fine considering hours spent on airport and traffic to the centre of the city

[kedarpatil]

I see a passenger hyperloop tunnel as an absolute loss, a vast majority would still prefer flights that are much more reliable and cheap compared to hyperloop.
A cargo train tunnel is more feasible, as it would take much less time to ship a lot of cargo from Europe to America, meeting the demand slot for people whose cargo is too big for planes, but it needs to be shipped as quickly as possible. Such a tunnel would also support ridiculously long trains going through them, allowing much more cargo to be transported.
That would make the project atleast a little more feasible, compared to hyperloop, which, considering today's demands, is complete madness to build.

[firefox]

I would rather see a tunnel network linking the Lesser Antilles island chain, a tunnel between Spain and Morocco, a tunnel between Finland and Estonia, a tunnel between Japan and S. Korea, tunnels linking Vancouver Island with the mainland, and a whole lot of others.

[yougoslavia]

A tunnel between Russia and Alaska might be easier.
Edit after the war started: nvm unless Putin gets destroyed this can't happen.

[alterworlds]

It would be impressive, but the amount of damage a single terror attack would inflict would be catastrophic. Also, the scale of the construction compared to global production is just unreasonable, as the time scale of the project shows. Perhaps by the time we have started harvesting asteroids for incalculable levels of raw materials, we will have enough automated factories to manage this. This is all assuming we don't kill each other in the coming climate disaster, sending us into a new dark age while making much of the world uninhabitable.

[tonychan]

1:44 As a Brit, my first thought is that the most difficult part of this plan is Scotland to England

[Auscan_Octrice]

It makes no sense to me to connect the tunnel to the uk and not France, Spain or Portugal unless more tunnels were built to the uk because I’d imagine the chunnel would be choked with stuff going to the uk and then to the americas

[danycashking]

10 hours is perfectly feasible, yes jetliners can cross it in 7 but that's not including the airport hassle which is usually at least 2 hours without the commute to the airport itself. Combine that with more comfortable seating even for economy class on a train and no expensive luggage add-ons and I think a lot of people would choose the train instead.

[davekirk]

What about continental drift? The USA and Europe are moving apart at about 2cm/year. If both ends are fixed to land, there's going to soon be problems

[pollutingpenguin]

Norway has approved to build a submerged floating tunnel in one of their fjords

[drabberfrog]

If we're going to spend $12 trillion dollars then I think it would make a lot more sense to continue using airplanes to travel across the Atlantic and use all the money we saved to fight climate change. Carbon capture could offset all the emissions from aircraft. Or we could waste 12 trillion dollars on a tunnel that no one needs because we are already able to travel between North America and Europe much faster than the tunnel would even allow. Instead of spending $12 trillion on a tunnel that can manage to go as fast as an aircraft it would be pocket change in comparison to just build a supersonic airliner to do it and it would be even faster.

[ianroude]

Personally, I don't think that one will be built any time soon. I think that advancements in air travel will make the tunnel less of a need as airplanes will get faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly :)

[davidetrimigliozzi]

Considering the price of construction and operation a ticket would be Crazy expensive, while this project Is undeniably ambitious I think that Planes and ships are safer and cheaper