The western coast of Norway is home to some of the most dramatic landscapes on earth.<br />Carved by glaciers throughout the ages, some of these fjords stretch for 200 kilometres<br />inland and are over a kilometre deep.<br />The current convoluted travel route through and around this terrain takes you along Norway’s<br />1,100 kilometre, 683 mile, E39 highway.<br />A road with a total journey time of 21 hours.<br />Now, the Norwegian government are working to improve access to services and residential<br />and labour markets across the country’s western regions by embarking on the largest<br />infrastructure project in the nation’s history.<br />Norway’s E39 highway runs between, Kristiansand<br />in the far south of the country and Trondheim in the north.<br />The route navigates its way<br />across the fjord network and features no fewer than seven ferry crossings.<br />The new coastal highway project aims to eliminate the need for ferry services altogether by<br />building a series of bridges and tunnels across, through and under the landscape.<br />With many of the fjords along the route being too wide or too deep for conventional infrastructure<br />to cross, innovative new solutions are being investigated by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration.<br />Rogfast is the first in a series of crossings that will link the E39, connecting Stavanger<br />and Haugesund via a 27 kilometre, 16 mile, under sea tunnel.<br />This structure will reach depths of up to 390 metres below sea level, making it the<br />deepest as well as the longest undersea road tunnel in the world.<br />The Rogfast project will in fact consist of two tunnels connected every 250 metres with<br />emergency exits.<br />Each tunnel will have a lay-by at 500 metre intervals, along with telephone<br />and surveillance cameras along the route.<br />The tunnel will also feature a mid-route intersection with the island municipality of Kvitsøy creating<br />an undersea tunnel junction and connecting the island with the Norwegian mainland.<br />With work begun in 2018, this element of the project is set to be completed by 2026 at<br />a cost of USD $2BN.<br />While the Rogfast works are already underway, the scale of some other fjords is presenting<br />the project team with extreme engineering challenges.<br />Bjornafjord - located to the south of Bergen - stands 5 kilometres wide, and reaches depths<br />of 600 metres.<br />To cross this challenging stretch of water, a proposal has been put forward for a floating<br />bridge, anchored to the shore at both ends.<br />The Sulafjord crossing has seen two possible solutions put forward.<br />The first is for a three tower suspension bridge, with two of the bridges’ towers<br />anchored on land and the third central tower anchored to the seafloor, some 400 metres<br />below the water line.<br />An alternative proposal for a “submerged floating tunnel” would see two interconnected<br />tubes running side by side tethered to the seabed using high strength cables.<br />Crossing the Romsdalsfjord will require a 16 kilometre undersea tunnel, much like the<br />Rogfast project, from Alesund to Midsund - followed by a 2 kilometre suspension bridge
