Skip to main content

Netherlands: Velsertunnel to be closed for nine months

The 60-year-old road and rail Velsertunnel in the Netherlands will be closed from now until the end of the year for major renovations. Improvements to the Velsertunnel beneath the North Sea Canal are scheduled for the road sections only, according to the Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch government’s Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, and the consortium doing the work. Rijkswaterstaat awarded a design/build/maintain contract in 2014 to Hyacint, a consortium of Besix, Dura Vermeer, and Spie, supp
April 19, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
The 60-year-old road and rail Velsertunnel in the Netherlands will be closed from now until the end of the year for major renovations.

Improvements to the Velsertunnel beneath the North Sea Canal are scheduled for the road sections only, according to the Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch government’s Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, and the consortium doing the work.

Rijkswaterstaat awarded a design/build/maintain contract in 2014 to Hyacint, a consortium of Besix, Dura Vermeer, and Spie, supported by iNFRANEA. Last year the consortium completed a 3-D BIM model (Building Information Modelling) of the tunnel and of the proposed work to be done. %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal Click here Visit bimontherocks.com website false http://bimontherocks.com/bim-helps-renovate-aging-tunnel/ false false%> for the presentation.

The renovated tunnel will have a 12cm higher clearance profile for trucks, new asphalt and modern technical installations, such as CCTV, fire protection equipment, traffic control systems and ventilation. Escape routes will also be fully updated.

Under the contract, the original and now iconic ventilation towers reaching skyward atop the main ventilation building must remain intact. The unusual-looking towers were listed as a national heritage site in 2014.

Around 65,000 vehicles a day use the tunnel and traffic will be diverted to the Wijkertunnel, a toll tunnel.

The Wijkertunnel is a 21-year old structure that is the first public-private partnership in the Netherlands. Three-quarters of the total €272 million construction cost was put up by a consortium of banks and insurance companies, including ING and Commerzbank. The contract was for 30 years.

Related Content

  • Denmark to create Rodby port to service Fehmarn Belt construction
    January 6, 2015
    The Danish government said it will create a large port area east of the small town of Rødbyhavn to facilitate construction of the future Fehmarn Belt tunnel link. The US$7.5 billion project is an 18km tunnel including two railway tunnels, two motorway tunnels and an emergency tunnel. Construction start is scheduled for later this year and should take between six and seven years. The tunnel is part of the major infrastructure project called the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link to connect the German island of Fe
  • Turkmenistan starts construction of Ashgabat-Turkmenbashi road
    May 8, 2015
    Turkmenistan has started construction of the 544km Ashgabat-Turkmenbashi highway under a public-private partnership contract. The deal is expected to cost between US$800-900 million for every 2km or so of road construction from Ashgabat in central Turkmenistan to Turkmenbashi, a city of around 90,000 on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea. For a YouTube video graphic representation of the highway, click here. To see World Highways report onTurkmenistan’s highways projects in 2011, click here. Türkmenb
  • UK: Work starts on Mersey Gateway main bridge deck
    June 2, 2016
    Work has started on 2.2km Mersey Gateway’s main bridge deck as the project enters its third year of construction. The new six-lane toll bridge will link the English towns of Runcorn and Widnes and teams will begin to connect the steel support cables to the deck and upper pylons this summer. Trinity, the project’s movable scaffolding system (MSS), has cast the first 250m of the north approach viaduct and a new MSS is on its way to Halton to build the south approach viaduct. The local road network is al
  • ARTBA launching student video competition for 2015
    February 18, 2015
    The American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) is running its annual student video competition. This is set up to challenge students of all ages to produce a two-to-four minute video about America’s transportation infrastructure. World Highways continues to support this competition and has also posted links to those videos from past winners and runners up on its websites in previous years. The ARTBA Student Video Competition is now in its fifth year. The aim of the competition is to raise a