Elbe Tunnel

The New Elbe Tunnel, often simply called Elbtunnel, is a subterranean Elbe river crossing in northern Germany located in Hamburg.DescriptionThe Elbtunnel has a length of 3.1km. As a part of the Bundesautobahn 7 in Hamburg, the tunnel forms a connection between Schleswig-Holstein (and on towards Denmark) to the north and Lower Saxony to the south. It has 8 lanes in 4 bores. The newest, fourth bore is the only one to feature a hard shoulder, minimizing congestion due to broken down vehicles.HistoryThe tunnel was constructed from 1968 to 1975 with three bores, containing a total of six autobahn lanes serving the city of Hamburg. On 10 January 1975 the Chancellor of Germany, Helmut Schmidt, opened the Elbe Tunnel. The tunnel was constructed with a capacity for 65,000 cars daily.In 1989 concrete tank barriers were constructed on the three south entrances. In war times these barriers would have been exploded out of their resting places. The barriers were removed in 2000 during construction of the 4th bore.WideningTo meet the demands of increasing traffic, on 27 October 2002 a fourth bore was opened with two more lanes. It had been drilled through the ground by the then world's largest tunnel boring machine (TBM), which had a front plate 14.65 m (48 ft 1 in) in diameter. The machine's name was Trude, a short form of the name Gertrud, and an acronym for Tief runter unter die Elbe (deep down under the Elbe). The European Space Agency had helped in engineering aspects of the tunnel project for the tunnel boring machine.