Boris Johnson wants to build a 35km sea bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland. Can it be done?
- Experts say building bridge over waters 300 metres deep would be ‘technically feasible, but challenging’
- Comes as UK prime minister moves forward with HS2 high-speed rail plan, despite soaring costs
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is moving at top speed to transform the country’s creaking transport infrastructure – but is his idea of building a 35km crossing over the Irish Sea to link Scotland and Northern Ireland a bridge too far?
Downing Street confirmed this week that Johnson had ordered feasibility work into the bridge that would link the picturesque Scottish harbour of Portpatrick with Larne, a ferry port in County Antrim.
Already dubbed “the Boris Bridge”, critics have dismissed the proposal as pie in the sky, or a “dead cat on the table” to distract attention from other issues. But is it even possible to build such a structure?
“Technically feasible – yes, but challenging, it is at the edge of what civil engineering has accomplished so far,” said Dr John McKinley, a senior lecturer in engineering at Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
If it is ever built, the bridge would cross rough water that is more than 300 metres deep in some places. It would need a series of supports to hold the structure in place, like the 7.8km Oresund bridge, which connects Sweden to Denmark.
Nor would it be a structure spanning the greatest expanse of open water. That prize goes the 36km Hangzhou Bay Bridge in China.