Excavating for a better connection

The rich arable soil of Fehmarn lies in long ridges on the field, the green planted dams look like ramparts. These piled-up formations are called “rents” in construction and agriculture. The two meter high, artificial hills consist of Fehmarn black earth. The valuable topsoil was removed to a depth of 40 centimeters and then deposited.

"During the storage period, the soil is planted with regional seeds to prevent erosion," says Gregory Formichella from Danish state-owned company Femern A/S. “Everything was measured with GPS. Every farmer gets back exactly his soil after the end of the construction work. This is particularly important because the arable land on Fehmarn is very valuable.”

On the north-east side of the island of Fehmarn, next to the Puttgarden ferry port, Femern A/S is driving the largest transport project in Northern Europe. The Danes, who are planning, implementing and financing the major project, want to do everything right. You do not want to give the skeptics and tunnel opponents in Germany any further arguments, which is why they are paying attention to the fields on the construction site.

The southern tunnel portal of the Fehmarnbelt tunnel and its connections to the rail and road are being built on the huge construction site. From 2029 onwards, freight and passenger trains, cars, trucks and buses are to travel to and from Denmark via the tunnel ramp – in around ten minutes by road and seven minutes by rail.

The ferries of the shipping company Scandlines now need 45 minutes for a passage between Puttgarden and Rødbyhavn. The Fehmarnbelt tunnel will be around 18 kilometers long when, fully assembled from concrete elements, it lies in a channel on the seabed and connects the islands of Fehmarn and Lolland.

And despite all the effort, many of those who have viewed the transport project critically or negatively for years are not changing their perspective. The planned inland connection of the high-speed route from the island to the German mainland via the Fehmarn Sound also causes frustration on Fehmarn. A number of Fehmarans, not just the mayor, believe that the future, more extensive and faster transit traffic will primarily harm the island.

The tunnel construction site near Puttgarden measures around 100 hectares. The counterpart in Rødbyhavn is even larger at 150 hectares. Because on the Danish side, in addition to the tunnel portal, the factory for the 89 concrete elements that will later form the tunnel is also being built. Also, the area of ​​land reclamation and the working port in Denmark are much larger than in Germany.

"On Fehmarn, around 180,000 cubic meters of concrete will be used for the three bridges and the portal building for the Fehmarnbelt tunnel," says civil engineer Formichella, who is responsible for the landside work on the German side at Femern A/S. "In total, including the segments for the immersed tunnel, around three million cubic meters of concrete will be used." On Lolland, the excavation from the tunnel trench will create around 300 hectares of new land, on Fehmarn it will be around 16.5 hectares.

The construction work on the German side is also complex. Two consortia are driving the project forward: Femern Link Contractors (FLC) are building the tunnel including the two portals and the factory for the tunnel elements in Rødbyhavn. Fehmarn Belt Contractors (FBC) is digging the channel through the Baltic Sea and is responsible for the construction of the two working harbors and the respective land reclamation. Many other companies are supporting the consortia, both in Denmark and in Germany: "We are closely involving 50 companies from the region in the work here," says Formichella.

Martin Staffel is currently on Fehmarn about two to three times a week. At Femern A/S Staffel, who, like his colleague Formichella, is also German, coordinates the excavation and land reclamation work. On the Danish side, construction work has been progressing rapidly since 2020.

The experience gained from this will also help Femern A/S on Fehmarn: "The working port here is expected to go into operation in the first half of 2023. We will use him to bring a large part of the required building material to the German construction site. This relieves the roads on Fehmarn," says Staffel during a tour of the construction site slopes in the new electric vehicle with all-wheel drive.

With the exception of the arable soil, all of the soil excavated and moved during the construction of the tunnel and the portals is to be reused: “More than 600,000 cubic meters of excavated soil from the tunnel trench are already stored here, and a little more than 100,000 cubic meters will be added,” says Staffel . “The ground storage is eight meters high. This material will later be used here on our construction site for dam structures.”

The construction work at Puttgarden is proceeding as planned. In Fehmarn's town hall in Burg, however, people don't think much of the new traffic route. "For a local government of our size, the burden of such a project is enormous," says Mayor Jörg Weber (SPD) in the council chamber.

The establishment of an initially temporary fire station for the tunnel and later the construction and operation of a new station for 40 to 50 firefighters demand a lot from the island, although the state of Schleswig-Holstein bears the costs. The island roads are already overloaded for many reasons, says Weber and shows cell phone photos of long traffic jams from the summer. The construction work at Puttgarden also contributed to this.

Weber and his employees are particularly worried about the transition to the mainland via the Fehmarnsund, the classic bottleneck for the island. Since 2020, the Fehmarnsund Bridge has been renovated - independently of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel project. "If I have an appointment on the mainland, I now drive there very early and, if in doubt, I prefer to work on the computer in the car," says Weber. "The risk of being stuck in traffic is simply too great."

And the real challenge is yet to come, as construction for the inland link hasn't even started on the island. Weber and his Fehmarnbelt representative Jürgen Zuch fear that the future work on the Fehmarn Sound could put a heavy strain on island traffic for years to come. "The Deutsche Bahn, which is responsible for crossing the Sound, does not know to this day whether the Fehmarnsund Bridge still needs to be included, or whether they can complete the planned tunnel through the Fehmarnsund in time," says Zuch.

At Deutsche Bahn in Hamburg, it is said that they are "in the middle of planning" for an immersed tunnel through the Fehmarnsund. At the beginning of 2020, the Federal Ministry of Transport selected these from a number of alternatives: In the future, long-distance traffic via the Fehmarnsund should run through a two-kilometer tunnel and no longer over the bridge.

How and for how long the tunnel will be built is still open. The only thing that is certain is that the concrete elements required for this will not come from the factory for the Fehmarnbelt tunnel in Rødbyhavn. The Fehmarnsund is too shallow to drag tunnel elements from Denmark there.

According to information from WELT AM SONNTAG, the railways are now discussing two variants: the construction of a factory for the tunnel elements on the Fehmarnsund near Grossenbrode - or the production of the elements directly on the Baltic Sea. For this purpose, the individual sections of the tunnel could be drained with sheet piling and the concrete elements poured directly into the prefabricated channel on the seabed from ships. That sounds adventurous, but it could be quicker than building a factory for the huge concrete parts beforehand.

Because time is running out for Deutsche Bahn, which has to create a total of 88 kilometers of rail connection for the Fehmarnbelt tunnel between Puttgarden and Lübeck. 55 kilometers of this route will be newly built. The German domestic connection must be in place by 2029, otherwise the tunnel will not be able to fulfill its purpose.

The journey time by ICE between Hamburg and Copenhagen is to be reduced from the previous five hours to two and a half hours with the new high-speed route. For freight trains that are to run again via the Fehmarnsund and the Fehmarnbelt after a long break, the route would be 160 kilometers shorter than the current route via Flensburg and the Great Belt.

The railway itself keeps a “fallback option” open if the tunnel through the Fehmarnsund is not completed at the same time as that through the Fehmarnbelt. If necessary, it is said that the old Fehmarn Sound Bridge should be retrofitted with an overhead line. A decision will be made no later than 2025/2026.

After the renovation, the bridge should only be used for long-distance traffic for a short time and then only for local traffic. With electrification, it would at least temporarily be able to accommodate passenger traffic to and from the Fehmarnbelt tunnel for some time. However, that would be the variant that is most feared in the town hall in Burg.