Known as the diamond capital of the world, Antwerp in Belgium is home to one of the world’s major seaports, however, the old city has a major traffic problem.
In 2022, drivers spent 61 hours in traffic on average — thanks in part to that unfinished ring road. The two current tunnels under the river have become bottlenecks, and congestion has spread to residential areas.
However, that is all soon to change as its mammoth infrastructure project the Oosterweel Link, is not quite world renowned – but it’s still classed as one of Europe’s most vital projects and will end Antwerp’s travel chaos.
Thanks to what has been billed as the “project of the century”, Antwerp will eventually welcome a self-contained network of its very own that will allow people to travel through the city underwater.
According to construction outlet B1M, the city is on the verge of finishing a miles-long mega complex of tunnels that have been painstakingly fitted together underwater.
Construction crews have spent the last decade developing the Antwerp Ring Road, a motorway that forms part of the Trans-European Transport Network that has, for years, been only partially accessible.
The ambitious Oosterweel Link project will cost €7 billion (£5.9 billion) and add a 1,800-metre (1.8km) stretch that completes the construction by burrowing under the city’s grand Albert Canal and beyond.
Crews will complete the network with 60,000-tonne concrete segments that will be slotted together underwater by 2025.
The tunnels will allow drivers and cyclists to travel through Antwerp underground, with two-directional travel facilitated by stacking some of those sections on top of one another.
The construction of this tunnel alone is an immense procedure that demands insane levels of accuracy.
Speaking to B1M Dieter Van Parys, project manager for THV COTU believes the quality of the construction “has to be very good”.
He said: “We have a lot of people who are checking, measuring, making sure that everything is in the right place.
“Because once the water is filled here in the building dock we can’t do anything again.”
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