UK set for world's longest tunnel

Plans for the longest road tunnel in the world to connect some of Scotland's remote communities are being drawn up

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Scheme will link Lewis with Ullapool

14th February 2007

The increased ferocity and frequency of winter storms in the Western Isles can cut them off for days. Now councillors and business leaders have started to devise a multi-billion-pound undersea link between Stornoway, on the island of Lewis, and Ullapool in Wester Ross.


	At 41 miles, the all-weather link would be nearly three times the length of the existing longest road tunnel, the 15-mile Laerdal in Norway

At 41 miles, the all-weather link would be nearly three times the length of the existing longest road tunnel, the 15-mile Laerdal in Norway, and nearly twice as long as a planned 24-mile link between Spain and Morocco. With the tunnel, it would take only 30 minutes to cross the Minch - a narrow stretch of the Atlantic notorious for its storms. At the moment, islanders face a three-hour ferry journey.

News of the plan was welcomed by locals. "This would solve all the problems we currently have of ferries and planes being cancelled due to the weather," said Cllr Donald Morrison, chairman of the island's transportation committee.

The largest tunnel of any kind in the UK is the 31-mile-long Channel crossing connecting Folkestone, Kent, with Calais in France. Opened in 1994, it is serviced by car-transporting trains rather than a road.