The Öresund Link - The world's largest immersed tunnel

Now you can travel directly by train or car between Sweden and Denmark. This is made possible by the Öresund link that runs between Lernacken to the south of Malmö, Sweden and a manmade peninsula outside Kastrup in Denmark.

The Öresund link, which is 16 kilometers long, is one of Scandinavia’s most important infrastructural achievements to date. It consists of three sections: a tunnel, a bridge and a manmade island that links together the tunnel and the bridge in the middle of the Öresund Strait. The bridge starts in Sweden and the tunnel in Denmark.

NCC led the Øresund Tunnel Contractors, the international consortium that built the 3.7-kilometer-long Öresund Tunnel.

Scope of the Öresund Tunnel

The Öresund Tunnel is the world’s largest immersed tunnel in terms of volume. It is 3.7 kilometers long and 40 meters wide, with space for four lanes of highway traffic, two railway tracks and a service tunnel.

The tunnel passes under the Drogden Channel between a manmade peninsula outside Kastrup and the manmade island Pepparholm in the Öresund Strait.

Tunnel comprises three main parts

• Tunnel ramps and entrances on the manmade peninsula.
• Immersed tunnel under Drogden.
• Tunnel ramps and entrances on the western part of the manmade island.

The tunnel entrances also includes underground service buildings with facilities for tunnel installations, such as road lighting, ventilation, drainage, communication and power supply.

Immersed tunnel

An immersed tunnel was chosen because the geological conditions of the ocean floor between Sweden and Denmark are not suitable for a bored tunnel. An immersed tunnel is constructed using a number of concrete tunnel parts that are combined and lowered into a channel that has been excavated on the ocean floor.