The International Tunnel of Tangiers

This afternoon’s lecture on earthquake engineering was a struggle. The mountains of photocopies that we were given didn’t really match up with what the lecturer was saying, which had the effect of further lowering Friday afternoon lecture attentiveness. I was however paying attention when the expert before us showed us a map of Europe showing the magnitudes and location of the major earthquakes that have hit the Mediterannean region. The largest seismic event shown I seem to remember wiped Lisbon off the map in during the 1700s. A line of seismic events can be drawn from the mid Atlantic, through the Straits of Gibraltar, joining the dots all the way to Naples, neatly following the southern edge of the Eurasain tectonic plate. When there is an erathquake Eurasia and Africa move relative to one another along this fault line.

So why am I giving you this geography lesson? Well I have just read in the ICE newsletter that a company has made a bid to build a tunnel under the Straits of Gibraltar (http://www.ice.org.uk/knowledge/spec_news.asp?ARTICLE_ID=1622). At 44km it will be longer than the Channel Tunnel. What’s more, the depth of the tunnel ( the Channel Tunnel is relatively shallow at only 50 odd metres below sealevel ) and the fact that the tunnel will have to pass through several different types of soil make the project barely feasible.

But there is no mention of what steps are going to be taken to make the tunnel earthquake proof. What is going to happen when the bit of the tunnel in the Eurasian plate moves one metre up down left or right relative to the African plate? As far as I am aware, tunnels aren’t like buses; they don’t come in ‘bendy’. (http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/press-centre/image-gallery/gallery.asp)

Finally I would like to know what the tunnel is going to be called. I think that the Gibraltar Strait Tunnel – or even the Gibraltar Bendy Tunnel (geddit?) is unfeasible because it contains the word Gibraltar and so I am sure it will kick of a squabble between the British and Spanish governments. The Algerceras tunnel is a no go because no one outside of Spain will be able to pronounce Algerceras. Which leaves the only other option. The International Tunnel of Tangiers. It is catchy and whats more, it reclaims Tagniers’ former standing as an international city. Unfortunately I don’t think my name is going to stick as it I think it will be a long time before a tunnel linking ‘North’ and ‘South’ is named after a place in Africa.