The Bohai Strait Tunnel or Dalian-Yantai Tunnel is a proposed

undersea tunnel An underwater tunnel is a tunnel which is partly or wholly constructed under the sea or a river. They are often used where building a bridge or operating a ferry link is unviable, or to provide competition or relief for existing bridges or ferry l ...

construction project across the

Bohai Strait The Bohai Sea ( zh, c=渤海, p=Bó Hǎi, l=Bo Sea) is a gulf/ inland sea approximately in area on the east coast of Mainland China. It is the northwestern and innermost extension of the Yellow Sea, to which it connects via the Bohai Strait. ...

to connect

Dalian Dalian ( ) is a major sub-provincial port city in Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, and is Liaoning's second largest city (after the provincial capital Shenyang) and the third-most populous city of Northeast China (after Shenyang ...

on the

Liaodong Peninsula The Liaodong or Liaotung Peninsula ( zh, s=辽东半岛, t=遼東半島, p=Liáodōng Bàndǎo) is a peninsula in southern Liaoning province in Northeast China, and makes up the southwestern coastal half of the Liaodong region. It is located ...

with

Yantai Yantai, formerly known as Chefoo, is a coastal prefecture-level city on the Shandong Peninsula in northeastern Shandong province of the People's Republic of China. Lying on the southern coast of the Bohai Strait, Yantai borders Qingdao ...

on the

Shandong Peninsula The Shandong Peninsula or Jiaodong (tsiaotung) Peninsula is a peninsula in Shandong in eastern China, between the Bohai Sea to the north and the Yellow Sea to the south. The latter name refers to the east and Jiaozhou. Geography The waters ...

. The official name for the project is Bohai Strait Cross-Sea Corridor ( zh, 渤海海峡跨海通道). Crossing the

, the tunnel would be long, of which would be underwater. This would exceed the combined lengths of the two longest undersea tunnels in the world, the Seikan Tunnel () and the

Channel Tunnel The Channel Tunnel (), sometimes referred to by the Portmanteau, portmanteau Chunnel, is a undersea railway tunnel, opened in 1994, that connects Folkestone (Kent, England) with Coquelles (Pas-de-Calais, France) beneath the English Channel at ...

(). The tunnel is planned to run more than under the Strait. Operated by

China Railway Engineering Corporation The China Railway Engineering Corporation (CREC) is a state-owned holding company of China, which is under the supervision of the State Council. The company is the major shareholder of China Railway Group Limited (CRGL), its subsidiary. CREC i ...

, the tunnel would be linked to the Chinese high-speed railway system. Cars would be loaded on railway carriages to make the 40-minute crossing. Currently, the

Bohai Train Ferry Bohai Train Ferry () is a train ferry service connecting Dalian, Liaoning and Yantai, Shandong in China over the Bohai Sea, which is the northern part of the Yellow Sea. The vessels used are long and have been in operation since 2007. General ...

, inaugurated in 2007, crosses the strait in eight hours. The project was estimated to cost 200 billion yuan (US$32 billion). In August 2014, it was reported that work is likely to commence during the 13th Five-year plan and construction would take ten years to complete. As of March 2018, the central government wants to get construction underway on this bay connection 'as soon as possible'. Plans were formally submitted to the

National Development and Reform Commission The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is the third-ranked executive department of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, which functions as a macroeconomic management agency. Established as the State Planning C ...

(NRDC) for approval in May 2019. The project would include bridges from Penglai linking the Changshan Islands, then a tunnel under the main Bohai Strait, for a total length of 125 km. If construction was started in 2020, the opening date would be in the early 2030s. The estimated budget has risen to 300 billion yuan (US$43 billion).

References

{{reflist, 30em Bohai Sea Proposed rail infrastructure in China Proposed undersea tunnels in Asia Rail transport in Dalian Rail transport in Shandong Proposed railway tunnels in Asia

See also

References