Why Sweden Gambled $4BN on a Super-Deep Tunnel 

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"More lanes have been added but it's not enough" yeah bro just one more lane bro we'll fix it bro one more lane

The problem isn't congestion in Stockholm per-se among its inhabitants; introducing more public transport would help with that. The problem is that Stockholm, as is mentioned, is built on a number of islands, between the Mälaren lake and the Baltic Sea, the former of which serves as ~150 km wide barrier. As a result, Stockholm serves as the only land bridge along the east coast. In addition to the inhabitants of Stockholm, there is a lot of traffic that needs to go from other parts of Sweden north and south of Stockholm. Because there are massive waterways they need to pass through the city, and there are currently essentially only two proper highways. One goes through the very center of the city - past the historical old town - and the other, Essingeleden, passes slightly to the west of it. (There are two smaller bridges but those are really just intended for city busses, vans, few passenger cars, bicyclists, etc - not long-haul trucks carrying containers) We've had incidents in the past where a long-haul truck crashed and blocked several lanes of traffic on the Essingeleden and it was catastrophic for not just the city's inhabitants but all other logistics passing through the city. The Stockholm bypass is meant to offer one additional route bypassing the center completely. While some Stockholmers might use it to cut their driving commute travels, and it will off-load the highways in the center, in practice the really big beneficiaries will be long-haul truck drivers.

FYI this is not only about congestion. The focus is to mainly shift away throughrunning traffic from the city center and also to reduce vulnerability of the road system in Stockholm.

Who the hell provided that b-roll at 6:15 ?!? 💀

Damn, I didnt expect to see this here. I spent 5 years working on this project on one of the sections. We had about 4 kilometers of main tunnels + all small connection tunnels and ramps, which added up to about 20 kilometers of tunnel. It was very interesting work.

2:44 Fred: This enormous project isn't built in a day Me: *he's going to talk about the sponsor*

6:14 Someone teach that guy how to use a petrol pump!!!

The IKEA highway, connecting the two stores north and south of the city.

It would be cool for you to look back at some of your older episodes and check back on the status of those construction projects today!

All the stock footage was actually of Stockholm, the description of the project as well as the history of traffic in Stockholm was accurate. Impressive!

Seeing a lot of weird takes from people who presumably do not understand the situation. A bypass is needed. The E4 is one of if not the most trafficked highway in Sweden, running along the entire country and going through Stockholm. There are countless journeys being taken going north or south and they all have to pass THROUGH the capital on the current E4. A bypass can divert all those cars and semi-trucks so that the traffic that you see in the city is basically only city traffic, no one just passing through. If you're going from Sundsvall to Jönköping, why would you need to drive through the capital and add to the traffic there?. It's like if every journey going along the east coast of the United States HAD to go through Washington D.C

buckle up everyone. B1M is here

Passing by my hometown.. We been waiting long rime for this tunnel..

The tunnel goes from where I live to where my grandmother lives. She's 85. It won't be completed before we both pass away from old age. I'm 34.

Besides this project they are also building out the metro network a lot. What I still don’t understand is with so much tunneling being done that the whole klarastrandsleden to centralbron is not being tunneled. Mind boggling how a major road like that can just pass through the middle of the city.

To everyone who are against this project saying this is "just another lane". You are wrong. This isnt Houston where they increase to infinite lanes. This project is to divert the traffic from the city center. There is no reason for a highway to cut right through city centers like in stupid american cities. European cities have less traffic because our highways tend to be build around our cities, not straight through. This is exactly what this project is about.

We have a tunnel going through Hallandsåsen that cost around 11,9BN to build

So, when are you gonna cover the rail tunnel project Västlänken in Gothenburg? It would be a really good case study on contruction project controversy.

I have been waiting a long time for this video! As it's such a big project i Thought it would pop up here sooner or later. And i'm not disappointed by it either! Would be cool if you made a video about the extension of the subway system in stockholm as well as they are building the deepest subway station in the world as well as having had some big chalanges of a very different kind to what you normaly hear about!

I like that at 0:45, when he says "officials are looking for another solution", the trains are right in sight. The video just derailed a bit after that.

The title update is so on-point!

I worked on this scheme over 10 years ago as a strutural engineer through GGJV (Grontmij / Golders) and it was fun... one thing about the Swedes that i remember was regular meetings to plan the next series of meetings, all within a multi-disciplinary design envirnment... lol

Been down in that tunnel a few times over the past years while they been working on it an it always amazes me how deep it is

It's probably time to check out the infrastructure projects in gothenburg! That video about gothenburg a while back didn't really cover them

A lot of people are saying that Stockholm doesn’t have enough public transport, but the problem is that the highway network aren’t designed as thruways, but as a commuter option.

And if you ask people who study traffic patterns, the bypass will barely have any effect, since there is almost no through traffic; nearly all vehicles are going to or from Stockholm itself. Meanwhile, the Citybana, which *doubled* rail capacity in the city, got less than half the budget of the bypass...

I remember passing the entrance in hägggvik plenty of times as a kid. I forgot about it completely.

"Just one more lane...!"

Have you done videos on Slussen or the new Tunnelbanestations? Would be fun to see

There was a Reddit thread on Swedish Reddit a while back asking people from Stockholm who drive why they don't use public transportation, and they all basically said the same thing: Taking public transportation takes too long, in part because you often need to switch between different trains and busses several times to get to and from work, and every switch can have you waiting at a bus stop/train station for up to 20 minutes. Many said that a 20 minute drive can take an hour on public transportation.

Very enjoyable as always 👍

There is another bypass route as well, much longer but also cheaper and has local benefits along the way. Road 50 from Mjölby to Motala has been upgrade a lot in recent year, allowing a connection from E4 to E20/E18 to Enköping. From there Road 50 again from Enköping to Uppsala and we have a serious contender for bypassing the Stockholm choke point. It does bypass Sörmland and most of östergötland as well, so it is not for all traffic, but it should help solve some of the problems.

Good video, maybe revisit this project again in the future if possible

Was Amzing to hear about the BM1 on the radio 5! Construction in the future will be 4D printed and A.I. will build our city's in mega factories and then transport them to the sites!

Have they made a video about Västlänken in Gothenburg, Sweden?

Eastern part of sweden lacks a bypass as well. Extra lanes need to use as busway lane and rail lines.

"More lanes have been added but it's not enough" Hmm it's almost like that's not how that works

The *Boston Big Dig* of SWEDEN 🇸🇪.

Stunning shot 🏆 🏆 🏆

You should take a look at Västlänken while you are doing some digging, the huge tunnel building in Gothenburg.

My big pet peeve with this project is that they made the Lovö island exit so complex and in such a silly location, traffic channeling to smack dab middle of a nature reserve. What they should've done is swing the tunnel curves around a bit and build a junction before (underneath Kungshatt, for traffic towards Ekerö) and a junction after (around Nockeby).

I wonder if, in the spirit of encouraging inner city mass transit, the Essingeleden could be narrowed in the future. That's a lot of land that could be repurposed to building, other forms of transport etc. I don't know what you could do with the bridges.

"cold winters" You should see our "summers"... :D

This is what Toronto needs for the gardeniar; an express bypass while there is still room for the option

God damn, it's pleasure to observe such a mega project

Are you guys going to do a video on the Rogfast tunnel, would be interesting to see the logistics of digging sutch a deep tunnel

Hey man, love the videos, please do more videos of projects that you think are bad. would love to have your negative take on some projects

That outro song song smacked

I live in Stockholm and I can tell you that this new bypass is sorely needed. Currently the E4 which is a major highway which runs north-south through the entire country, goes right through the city center. A major highway running through a city center is just absurd.

Accidents will be a nightmare.

Nice film! I have also worked on the project! Buildning electrical infrastructure, several years ago!

I live right next to this, I used to hear the regular explosion signals.

Actually around 30 000 islands in Stockholm :)

Its gonna be so awesome when its done! M Gonna do great things for my city!

What's the name of the song at the end of the video, please?

Talk about the Lucky Sorter!

This would easily cost £150bn in the UK

To be fair the 4B budget doesn't bother me at all - here in Lund it took 1B just to build a street car line stretching a few kilometers. 4B for a massive tunnel network? These guys are alot better at their job.

Just one more lane, bro. At least they'll be able to put a train in the tunnel at some point.

The BM1 is starting by asking if it is a pointless project. Then ending by welcoming it!?

You should do a video on Västlänken. You could probably do a series to be honest.

Nice to live in a Town 200 miles vest of Stockholm, Örebro if you wonder.

Dear Fred, Stockholm's underground construction is booming, it's going to expand for 20% for the upcoming years, can you please cover that topic as well? Love everything you do, can't wait for another video

Pretty incredible that we haven't advanced to this before now, we had subways so early it's surprising that we didn't level up and just create all of our highways underground considering the vast space and structure we can provide with modern engineering.

That's only one part of the new underground freeway network, like the last 1/3 of it. Even our new central train terminal is deep underground and it's HUGE!

Speaking of Sweden, when will you be covering Västlänken and Karlatornet?

I live in stockholm, Ive never seen strained traffic in the city centre.

This will also connect with a similarly scaled south side bypass (Tvärförbindelse Södertörn), spaghetti junction go brrrr!

A huge part of the traffic is traffic that is just going through Stockholm due to lack of any good alternative for longer transportation! It's not just caused by traffic that has somewhere close to Stockholm as destination. E4 is by far the most important road in Sweden and what is needed is a very, very wide ring road alternative that completely avoids having passing traffic getting anywhere near Stockholm. This rather intermediate ring will not really fix that much of the problem. It can absolutely been argued that it would have made much more sense to update road 55 Norrköping-Katrineholm-Strängnäs-Enköping-Uppsala to a high capacity highway that they also change paths at some places like a relatively cheap updated road that avoids going into Flen. Because even when this extremely expensive project is completed the video is talking about, it will not stop a lot of traffic that has no business driving close to Stockholm to still congest parts close to Stockholm. A lot of the congestion is on the E4 itself for instance between Nyköping and Stockholm (especially Södertälje-Stockholm that is both E4 and E20 combined). This problem will not be fixed at all by this project as this bypass simply isn't far enough from the city. There is a trend in Sweden of politicians and decision makers having a far to strong "Stockholm perspective" on things and this project seems to be yet another example of that. Them seem completely negligent of the fact that a huge part of the traffic on the E4 close to Stockholm actually have no interest in visiting Stockholm at all, but are just interested in getting from one side of Mälaren to the other in an efficient way... Updating road 55 would have made so much more sense and be a much better investment per krona spent. "Förbifart Stockholm" (the project discussed in this video) will be very expensive and only solve a small part of the actual problem.

the correct side of the road!

All these people talking crap about highway, they are essential.

You should do a video about the west link (västlänken) in Gothenburg

Please do a piece on the Västlänken fiasco in Gothenburg.

Amazing project ,as like massive engineers projects

Side note, when Sweden had left-hand traffic, we still had left-hand driven cars. Which made for exiting overtaking.

I wonder why they decided to use traditional blasting rather than a TBM? Was it just the need to pre grout the route to seal out water?

8 minute video and 2 ads. You are getting too greedy.

Unbelievable size of a job!!, going far enough outside the city too 🤔 a fair few link roads back into city will be added??

I have pondered many times how beneficial it would be to have underground highways in landscapes with extreme winters.

1:35 - I'm confused, how does an increase of 43% end up at 3.5 million? 43% of (almost) 1 million would be 430,000? Which would end up at around 1,430,000? Am I missing something?

As a Swede I can dispute this by saying that Swedes especially Stockholmians walk and drive on the left side still

Can someone send the design engineers and construction company to Melbourne, Australia? We are getting a 6km tunnel that is projected to cost at least €16 billion! 🤦‍♂️

Can you talk about the Super collider ? They invested billions into it back 20 years ago I believe but they stopped. A video from a professor like you would be awesome

That should be the one who signed the contract approved the contracts with his team members telling everyone if the project is pointless or not.

here is an idea for reducing carbon emmisions in the air with tunnels,since tunnels need intakes andd exhausts for air on the underground,you put carbon capture machines right at the air filtering system.That way all the emmisions from cars on the tunnel get trapped and stored in underground rocks before ever coming on the surface,that way you get the best of both worlds,less trafic in the city ,more space for construction and parks,as well as better air quality

7:47 What, no mention of a second use for the tunnels? There must be. Sweden's famous for it: nuclear shelters, emergency rain storage tanks, public sports halls and swimming pools. Guess we'll have to wait to find out.

Interesting that they went with drill & blast instead of a TBM. Googling, it's seems TBMs are better suited for tunneling through stable rock, so I guess Stockholm is lacking that..?

Stockholm and Tirana is told to be the only capitals in Europe without a road around it.

If you blast a tunnel you crack surrounding rock. Given the continual need to build tunnels, it seems that reusable tunnel boring machines make sense for this project and future projects. I would think a triple wide boring machine would work well or a modular single/double/tripple etc. boring machine would be even better.

Consider the Austin-San Antonio I-35 second level roadway projects happening right now. It's going up fast, they don't know where the money to pay for it will come from but they are building it anyway. It's a congestion nightmare

this is still a big and impressive project, but we've seen a lot of those here on this channel. the switch to right side traffic mentioned in the intro sounds a lot more interesting, though. why they did it is pretty clear, but it would be nice to know how they did that without causing tons of traffic accidents.

Bro dropped a whole gallon

Thanks for this - good to see it from this perspective. One could only hope there was a better solution than trying to cram all of Sweden into one city whilst the hinterland dies. We have the tech to work from anywhere after all and this idea of having to stack all the companies on top of each other seems very 20th century.

4bn to go under a major city and water ways? in usa this would cost 800bn

The far less than 1km train tunnel between New York and New Jersey is costing 16 billion. Something doesn’t add up.

Fire suppression is water? With the switch to electric vehicles, that might be short sighted.

I think all the tunnelling is done now. The rest of the work is fitting out the tunnels etc.

Driving in Stockholm is one of the worst experiences in my life. I live in Örebro, about 2 hours away, and had to go to the embassy. The parking is expensive, every street has a million rules, and the traffic was just ridiculous.

Feature ASEAN Countires Projects please! Would love see them.