Stad Skipstunnel (Stad Ship Tunnel) will be the worlds first tunnels for ships. That is when it is built. For now is it still a planned tunnel. People of Vestland (in Norway) are really getting tired of slow progress.

The Stad Skipstunnel tunnel is important for the people living in Vestland. Ships going around the Stad peninsula are very much exposed to treacherous waters of the North Sea without any protection due to lack of outlying islands. This costline is considered one of the most dangerous in whole cost of Norway.

Roughly this will be the route (there are several competing route plans close to each other  - image from  wikimedia  Oliver O'Donnell / CC BY-SA)

The Stad Skipstunnel will be 49 metres high and 36 metres wide. It will have a dept of 12 meters. The tunnel will be able to handle ships of up to 16,000 tons.

It has been proposed many decades only. A whole 144 years ago. Finally in 2013 it has been included in the National Transport Plan of Norway.

Yet, already 7 years passed since 2013, one study followed another study only to be followed by another study. According to an opinion column by a Center Party member at Summørsposten, the number of studies conducted on the tunnel has already reached 20 (twenty).

Vestland people are tired of never ending studies and foremost they do not understand why this project gets much more study than technically comparable other projects like the immersed tunnel under the Opera in Oslo. Which by the way has cost 5.9 billion, more than twice the projected cost of 2.7 billion for the Stad Skipstunnel.