Tarifa/Tangiers: The Spain-Africa link in 2025

By on October 15, 2010
strait-gibraltarAfter 34 years of hesitation, the proposed fixed link between the Straits of Gibraltar will be revived at the initiative of the European Union (EU). The project was presented in Luxembourg at a meeting of the EU-Morocco Association Council. This time the project has the support of the European Union, and the estimated cost of the construction of the fixed link is estimated between 4 and 5 billion Euros to be made by Spain, Morocco, the EU and private funding agencies.
The offshore drilling for geological survey of the seabed was conducted in accordance with the program established by the SNED-Morocco and SECEG-Spain companies. The feasibility study for the forty miles tunnel between Tarifa in Spain and Malabata in Morocco has been concluded and positive.

Projections for this titanic project provide a construction of the railway tunnel in three phases. The first phase will be the excavation of the underwater section of the service tunnel as a gallery of recognition, followed then by the construction and the commissioning of the first railway tunnel. The third and long-term phase would be the construction of the second railway tunnel in response to traffic evolution of the first tunnel. If the project goes ahead and construction begins, trains carrying both passengers and goods are expected to start using the tunnel in 2025. The tunnel would be 40km long and pass 300 m under the Mediterranean Sea. The undersea link would unite North Africa and Europe for the first time since the continents separated more than 200 million years ago. The Spanish and Moroccan governments see the tunnel as part of a new Mediterranean transport hub for passengers and goods. The annual traffic capacity of the single-tube tunnel is estimated to 1.6 million cars, 500 000 trucks, 5 million passengers and motorists and 11 million rail passengers. In the final phase, the capacity of the tunnel would be 50 million passengers and 6 million vehicles. The Board has considered the report on progress of the ongoing activities, prepared jointly by SNED and SECEG companies, and endorsed the actions.

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