CHINA - China Considers Longest Underwater Tunnel Under Bohai Sea

By Bloomberg News  Feb 14, 2014 6:25 PM GMT+0800

China may invest 220 billion yuan ($36 billion) to build the world’s longest tunnel beneath the Bohai Sea to connect the northeastern city of Dalian to Yantai in Shandong province, the state-run China Daily said today.

Proposals for the 123-kilometer (76 miles) tunnel, which is targeted for completion in 2026, may be submitted to the central government in April, the newspaper said, citing Wang Mengshu, an engineer working on the project. A feasibility study taking two to three years could begin as early as 2015, the report said.

The proposed tunnel will be the latest large-scale project undertaken by China if approved. The world’s second-largest economy has poured billions in past years to build infrastructure to spur growth, which may be more critical with gross domestic product forecast by economists to expand this year at the slowest pace since 1990.

The estimated project cost, at about 6 percent of China’s 4 trillion-yuan stimulus package during the 2008 global financial crisis, may boost consumption of steel to cement. The major ports of Qinhuangdao, Tianjin and Caofeidian are located along the coast of the Bohai Sea.

The tunnel will operate a rail link that will cut travel time between the two cities to 40 minutes, from about eight hours by ferry currently, the newspaper said. It will be more than twice the length ofJapan’s Seikan Tunnel, currently the world’s longest undersea tunnel at 53.9 kilometers.

Trains in the Bohai tunnel will run at about 220 kilometers an hour, while passenger vehicles will ride through the tunnel on rail carriages, the newspaper said.

The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top planning body, said on Jan. 29 that it will conduct a study of the tunnel this year.

The project was mentioned in Shandong province’s regional plan approved by the State Council in 2011, the China Daily said. The Beijing Times reported last year that Chen Zhenggao, provincial governor of Liaoning, urged the central government at the March meeting of the National People’s Congress to start the project as soon as possible to boost the regional economy.