Architect: 'Utter dislike for PM' sinks Scots/Ireland crossing plan

Hopes of a bridge or tunnel have been rejected by a feasibility study as too expensive – £335bn for the bridge or £209bn for the tunnel – and fraught with potential difficulties.

Released alongside a wider so-called union connectivity review for the UK Government, which called for investment in road, rail and domestic aviation to better connect the four UK nations, the fixed link report found either a bridge or tunnel would be at the very edge of what could be achieved with current technology.

READ MORE: 'Put the hallucinogenics down': Prospect of undersea tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland debunked

A study author Network Rail chairman Peter Hendy said the price of either project "would be impossible to justify" as "the benefits could not possibly outweigh the costs".

A bridge or tunnel would be the longest structure of their kind ever built, the study said.

It would take nearly 30 years to complete planning, design, parliamentary and legal processes, and construction, according to the research.

Mr Hendy's report concluded it is "technically feasible to construct, maintain and operate" a tunnel or bridge but recommended that no further work should be carried out due to the cost.

But Prof Dunlop, who is one of the UK’s leading architects and a Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, insists the creation of the 25-mile tunnel or a bridge is viable and said the costs estimates were "puzzling".

He pointed out that in Norway, they are building the Coastal Highway, 600 miles of new road, linking the north and south with tunnels cutting through mountains and using floating bridges over fjords 500 metres deep at a cost of £39bn.

The Norwegian project will cross 20 fjords, many more than 600 metres deep, and features what would be the longest undersea road tunnel in the world, when built, at 16 miles connecting Stavanger and Haugesund.

Norway's Lærdal Tunnel at 15.23 miles long, is the longest road tunnel in the world and provides a ferry-free connection between Oslo and Bergen.

Construction of that tunnel started in 1995 and opened in 2000 at a cost then of just £89m. Taking inflation only into account, that's £153.2m in 2020 prices.

Since the conclusion of the Brexit transition period on December 31, the crossing idea has been pushed into the spotlight, as the Northern Ireland protocol included in the Brexit withdrawal agreement sees the region remaining within EU trade regulations.

Prof Dunlop believes the sinking of the project was primarily political and related to "nationalism... utter dislike of Boris Johnson and sometimes raw sectarianism" and that it made sense to keep strong infrastructure links with Northern Ireland.

Prof Dunlop, who was awarded the Royal Gold Medal in Architecture from the Royal Scottish Academy believes that the project has fallen flat because Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been a vocal supporter of the fixed link between Britain and Northern Ireland.

The concept has previously been rubbished by Scotland’s NetZero, Climate and Transport Secretary Michael Matheson describing it as the Prime Minister’s “vanity project”.

He believed the link could end up costing £33bn and predicted it would not happen in the Prime Minister’s lifetime.

The proposed link, was described as the “world’s most stupid tunnel” by Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings.

Prof Dunlop said that when the idea first surfaced there had been positive responses from the Scottish Government.

But he said one senior Scottish Government figure had told him confidentially that it would have been better had Boris Johnson not come out in favour and supported a feasibility study.

He said: "So, much of the adverse comments related to the idea of a bridge of tunnel link are driven, in my view by nationalism, identity politics and utter dislike of Boris Johnson and sometimes raw sectarianism.

"The Scottish Government were positive about it.

"That all changed when the PM then foreign secretary made a speech in Belfast at the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) conference in November 2018 supporting the prospect of a link and quoting me.

"That's also on record. I visited Northern Ireland in June this year prior to the release of the study, for a BBC documentary.

"While there, the producers told me that there was much support for a link among the population of the north. I found that out myself walking around Belfast asking people.

"But Sinn Fein [ the Irish republican party] were dead against it because they argued against anything that brought the UK closer to Northern Ireland, which a link would do, and risked the possibility of a united Ireland.

"Like Sinn Fein, the Scottish government and the supporters of an independent Scotland will not support anything favoured by Westminster and particularly the PM because it could scupper a move to independence and remember transportation in Scotland is a devolved matter and the responsibility of the Scottish government. He was interfering.

"There's no doubt the intervention of Boris Johnson kept the story alive around the world for four years but also scuppered any chance of it happening. The PM is distrusted, I would say also hated, here in Scotland, because primarily of Brexit.

"As for raw sectarianism, if you look at some of the comments online when a piece on the link was published, there were a number of comments about Orangemen walking across.

Mr Hendy's report also said Beaufort's Dyke - an underwater trench on the most direct route between Scotland and Northern Ireland - would need to be "carefully surveyed" due to a million tons of unexploded munitions being dumped there between the First World War and the 1970s.

Professor Alan Dunlop

Beaufort's Dyke would prove “a challenge” for the bridge because the construction would have to pass over the trench, with a span of at least 2.5 miles and foundations set back from the edge, said the study, which was led by a small team of civil engineering experts.

A bridge would need a "sacrificial outer layer" enabling its main structure to survive a "local detonation", the study said.

Prof Dunlop, visiting professor at Robert Gordon University’s Scott Sutherland School of Architecture said that the geological and engineering challenges to both are not insurmountable.

If a tunnel was approved it would run under the Irish Sea between Portpatrick, in the south west of Scotland and Larne in County Antrim. A potential route for a bridge is from near Campbeltown, Scotland, to Northern Ireland’s Antrim coast.

Mr Hendy's analysis states a tunnel would have to be constructed at depths of about 400 metres below water level, exerting significant pressures and requiring a 25-mile climb in either direction given a maximum rail gradient of one in 100.

By comparison the Channel tunnel is just over 23 miles long, with a maximum depth of 75 metres.

The study found both the tunnel and bridge projects were possible.

“A bridge crossing, however, would be the longest span bridge built to date,” Mr Hendy wrote. “A tunnel would be the longest undersea tunnel ever built given the limited gradients on which trains can operate, the route it would need to take and the depths it would need to reach.”

Building a rail link would also create “some complexity” because the track gauge in Northern Ireland is the same as in the Republic but different to that in the rest of the UK.

Prof Dunlop said: "After making front page news globally, I'm disappointed but not surprised.

"Leaked reports in the media a month or so ago confirmed that this would happen but I am disappointed because I know, through my research over four years, that it can be done.

"Creating a link, bridging the UK with Northern Ireland would be a project fit for the 21st century, but politics seems to have scuppered the whole idea.

"It's a pity, for the UK government talks a lot about Building Back Better and levelling up but there is no obvious strategy for infrastructure, architecture or the built environment.

"This is a project that would have been a world first, nothing like it has been done before and it would help, like Roosevelt's New Deal, put people back to work .

"And after COP26 and the Build Back Better agenda, post-Covid and the government promise to "level up", the link could have, quite literally, tied Britain and Ireland together in an internationally impressive effort to regenerate both economies; provide green jobs and infrastucture."

Boris Johnson previously discussed the idea with Irish Tánaiste Leo Varadkar who supported it but said Ireland would not contribute to the cost.

He said it was “an idea worth examining and that we should take a look at it but I expect the UK to pay for it”.

And he believed that the EU would “definitely” not pay for it because neither Northern Ireland or Scotland are going to be in the EU.

But Prof Dunlop had been concerned at the direction of the project when Boris Johnson put forward a separate scheme that involved a planned roundabout under the sea.

The idea which surfaced in February involved as many three tunnels heading out from England and Scotland with a roundabout beneath the Isle of Man in a bid to iron out post-Brexit issues across the UK.

The proposal included three starting points: at Stranraer, Heysham, near Lancaster, and one near Liverpool. Then a single tunnel would run on from the Isle of Man to Northern Ireland.

Experts said that scheme would involve 105 miles of tunnel between Belfast and Liverpool. All the tunnels would be somewhere between two and a half and six times longer than the current longest road tunnel in the world.