A TUNNEL between Orkney and the Scottish mainland came a step closer yesterday when island councillors agreed to spend up to GBP20,000 on a feasibility study.
Their decision relates to the possibility of an undersea link between the Orkney mainland and the island of Shapinsay, where the 300 residents currently face a 45-minute ferry journey to Kirkwall.
But the council has already decided that the director of development services and the director of technical services should submit a joint report, to a future meeting of the transportation committee, regarding the feasibility of constructing a tunnel under the Pentland Firth to the Scottish mainland.
Stephen Hagan, Orkney's convener, said last night: "We decided just to look at Shapinsay just now as an example to see what we are talking about.
"If the study is positive and we decide to pursue tunnels, then we would look at which would be the first one."
Six competitive tenders will be sought for the study.
The composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has publicly opposed any programme of tunnel building.
Writing in a national newspaper he said: "There is a wonderful atmosphere here.
Tunnels would bring us that much closer to being like everywhere else. The mainland or Orkney would change out of all recognition and the population density would increase rapidly."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article