Ilaria Rosella Pagliaro Connecting London and New York with an ultra-fast train that travels under the Atlantic in just 54 minutes: a visionary project that promises to revolutionize global mobility
An ambitious idea has once again entered the global transportation scene: an underwater tunnel between London and New York that would take just 54 minutes to cross from one city to the other. Were it to happen, this project would completely revolutionize international mobility by greatly reducing travel time and the environmental impact of transatlantic flights.
High-tech to meet an ambitious dream
Centric to the proposal is a magnetic levitation train, called Vactrain, which runs in a near-vacuum atmosphere. Without the resistance of the air, this could reach astonishing speeds of around 4,000-5,000 mph, or 6,400 to 8,000 km/h. Using such technology, a journey of roughly 3,100 miles (5,000 km) between the two cities could be done in less than an hour.
With an engineering challenge for a tunnel of that size, solutions such as the following are put into consideration:
- A tunnel underwater, dug straight into the ocean’s floor.
- A submerged floating tunnel, located at about 150 feet or 45 meters depth beneath the ocean surface, anchored to the seabed with cables, so as not to interfere with the passage of vessels or adverse weather conditions.
A transatlantic tunnel would be a mega-project requiring colossal investment; cost estimates vary from tens of billions to trillions of dollars. Besides financial issues, the project also faces a number of other challenges: safety, maintenance, and the environmental impact of such a huge structure.
A dream rooted in history
The idea of an Atlantic tunnel is actually quite old. In 1888, one Michel Verne, the son of Jules Verne, envisioned in a story entitled “An Express of the Future,” a submarine train which would connect Europe and America. Since then, it has fired the imagination of engineers and dreamers alike, without ever passing the realms of science fiction.
If it were ever built, a transatlantic tunnel would be an ecological milestone in transportation, providing an alternative to flying-one of the most carbon-intensive modes of travel. Constructing and maintaining such infrastructure poses huge environmental challenges that demand innovative strategies for minimizing its ecological footprint.
Source: NewsWeek
