Why Are Tunnels The Best Way To Connect Rural Communities?

Purpose is critical when designing and constructing a tunnel, as planning, preparing and constructing a tunnel with its conveyor belt repair requirements, boring machinery, and labour needs can be expensive and extremely time-consuming.

This means that the benefits need to be somewhat significant to demonstrate that the tunnel is a necessity rather than a desire, such as significantly reducing travel times, improving throughput, minimising disruption or improving safety.

Making this case can be difficult with remote communities, as a campaign to connect the Shetland Islands has found, as the allure of an immediate imperfect solution often supersedes a long-term approach.

Why Do The Shetland Islands Need Tunnels?

The Shetland Islands are rather famously connected by a series of ferries, which link the smaller islands such as Yell and Unst to the Shetland Mainland.

For commuters, this adds considerable delays on a good day and can cause people to become stranded at their worst. Their journey to work is determined by the infamously brutal currents, tides and rough weather around the Shetland Islands.

In ideal conditions, the journey from the Shetland mainland to the northernmost island, Unst, takes over 80 minutes, with trips to a dozen islands in between.

A tunnel would cut travel times in half, but beyond this, it would stop the constant issues with cancellations, delays, disruptions and less-than-ideal travel conditions.

This would allow inhabitants of the various islands to maintain a link and potentially improve the quality of life of everyone on the “spinal link” chaining the islands together.

However, whilst considered by residents to be the best solution, it is not the only one being considered.

Why Is There A Reluctance To Build Connecting Tunnels?

The reluctance to build tunnels, besides the cost of planning and implementing such a project, is based around the question of solving an immediate problem with a long-term solution; should you choose the fastest solution or the best one?

With the existing fleet of ferries ageing and in need of imminent replacement, the longer-term timescales of a tunnel have been characterised by some, most notably Western Isles MP Torcuil Crichton, as an “expensive fantasy”.

The alternative proposal is to replace the ferry fleet, but an energetic campaign called “Time To Tunnel” has kept tunnels and fixed links in the conversation in Scotland and on the Shetlands.

Another option that has been proposed is building bridges, but this has been seen as the worst of both worlds; the costs and timescales are similar to a tunnel, but they are still affected by adverse weather.

Is There A Social Cost To Not Building A Tunnel?

A danger with public infrastructure project proposals, such as tunnels, is that they are often approached with a mentality that is aware of the price of everything but the value of nothing, and discounting anything that cannot be given an estimated cost.

The uncertainty that comes with unpredictable transport links has an accumulating effect on island communities, who eventually are forced to make the choice to either adapt to the added costs, stress and disruption, or move to the mainland.

People who live on the islands and work on the mainland or vice versa are forced to rely on contingency plans if they cannot make it back home. Some workers have reported having to spend weeks living in hostels or on work sites.

Depopulation is a consequence of this, as households and families find they can no longer rely on ferries.

These elements are difficult to calculate the cost of, but they contribute to the decay of communities and lead to increased isolation of the dwindling communities that do remain.

Which Tunnels Were Made To Connect Rural Communities?

Whilst it is impossible to list every tunnel used to connect a remote region to the mainland, here are some particularly notable examples:

- Guoliang Tunnel, China, which was famously carved by hand by the residents of a nearby village.

- Hvalfjordur Tunnel, Iceland, which cut travel times across the Icelandic fjord by nearly an hour to just seven minutes.

- Eysturoy Tunnels, Faroe Islands, which famously features the first undersea roundabout ever made.

The Faroe Islands are seen as a template for what is possible with the Shetlands, as they have used tunnels to connect practically every major settlement on the 18 major islands since the 1960s, significantly reducing travel times and creating inadvertent landmarks of their own.

The tunnels have created the reverse effect to that which is being seen in Unst, with growing numbers of people moving to some of the more formerly remote islands, now that they are more accessible.