The Fehmarnbelt tunnel - my hat trick!

“Of course, I feel like a winner!”

As one of the world's leading tunnel experts, Steen Lykke is referring to the recent declaration of intent by the Danish Minister of Transport in favour of an immersed tunnel rather than a bridge across the Fehmarnbelt.

“I’m extremely pleased with the minister's statement," he says. "However, if the declaration had favoured a bridge, I would have respected that, too. Without any doubt, a bridge would be a sculpture and a landmark. Even so, I'm confident that a tunnel will be a beautiful solution as well - a solution that will emphasise the attractiveness of the landscape and not interfere with nature.”

Since the age of four, Steen Lykke always dreamed of becoming an engineer. His parents thought he might become a bridge builder, but they were wrong. Instead, young Steen Lykke embarked on a career as a tunnel builder. Today, he can look back on a long and distinguished career as a builder of some of the world's most impressive tunnels.

It all began quite incidentally. During the Øresund Fixed Link project in the 1990s, Swedish engineers took charge of the engineering aspects of the bridge section because of its location on the Swedish side of the Øresund waterway. Steen Lykke was responsible for the tunnel on the Danish side, the biggest immersed tunnel ever built anywhere in the world. He then went on to head the construction of the deepest immersed tunnel ever built - the Turkish Marmaray Project tunnel under the Bosphorus in Istanbul. “The Fehmarnbelt tunnel will now be my personal hat trick,” he says with a smile.

During his more than thirty years as a professional engineer, Steen Lykke has worked with colleagues from many countries across the world. This experience will give him a very good starting position in his work with his German colleagues on the Fehmarnbelt link. Summarising his experience from working with people from different cultures, he points out:

“You need to understand other people’s working and business culture. Working with people of different nationalities is inspiring. However, if there are problems, the roots of these problems very often stem from cultural differences.”

Between Danes and Germans, he sees one clear difference. Germans believe more in authority and rules than Danes do. While the German way of working is highly efficient, the Danes are less disciplined and structured, disliking rules, creating new ideas and arguing for them until the bitter end – and so enhancing creativity. Every working culture, therefore, involves risks as well as opportunities.

Steen Lykke emphasises that, in general, he does not prefer tunnels to bridges. However, in the case of Fehmarnbelt, he believes a tunnel is the better solution:

“Usually, you only build a tunnel if a bridge is not feasible, but at the Fehmarnbelt a tunnel is genuinely competitive. A bridge would not be cheaper than a tunnel and a tunnel would not spoil the landscape.”

Does he understand some people’s fear of travelling through such a long tunnel under the sea? “Yes, I fully understand that. But there’s no justification for it. A tunnel can be made as safe as you reasonably want it to be. And modern tunnels of similar design as the Femern Baelt tunnel are certainly no less safe than bridges.”

He points out that many of the weather-related problems that affect open roads and bridges do not exist in tunnels. Also, in the event of accidents, travellers can easily be evacuated from the danger zone to a separate rescue corridor via emergency exits that are never more than approximately 50 metres away.

Steen Lykke believes that many people still carry mental images of fire disasters like that in the Mont Blanc Tunnel in 1999 or from disaster movies. However, safety standards in the Fehmarnbelt immersed tunnel will be much higher. As he says:

“We’re doing our best to make people see this as a friendly tunnel, with light entrances and wide and well-lit lanes. You can also find people who are fearful of driving across high bridges, but you don’t often hear about this. It’s the tunnel engineers’ mission to convince people of the safety of tunnels in the years ahead!”