Posts Tagged ‘Kvarken’

As far as building 100km bridges go, spanning the Kvarken, a narrowing of the northern Gulf of Bothnia, would be an easy task. Thanks to relatively shallow water, a generally firm seabed and an archipelago on the Finnish side, the challenge would lie less in getting the thing built than it would with coming up with the billions euros it would cost. (Estimates range from €5bn to €100bn.) For that reason, when the idea has come up in the past, it has been easy for lawmakers in Sweden and in Finland to dismiss it as a costly white elephant that would have little benefit compared with the existing ferry service.

These days, though, the calculus that drives the cost-benefit analyses of such projects has a new variable: security. Where the idea of a better-connected region has long been framed in economic terms, a bridge across the Kvarken is increasingly being discussed as a way for Finns to remain connected to Europe in the event Russian shenanigans render the Finnish-Swedish land border unusable. For now, a Kvarken bridge remains well over the horizon: a report published last year by Finland’s transport ministry reckons that the earliest one could be open for traffic would be the early 2040s. Still, proponents are bullish: the same report found a bridge was technically feasible and laid the foundation for an assessment of its economic benefits. A journey of a hundred kilometres begins with a single report.