Dublin Port Tunnel to open

runners in a tunnel It was one of the biggest fiascos in recent Irish history: the Dublin port tunnel. At the moment every bit of deliverable brought into Dublin port flows out on city streets right through the middle of town, creating absolute chaos with the flow of traffic.

The port tunnel is meant to divert 9,000+ heavy trucks and other vehicles a day out of Dublin city centre to north of the city. It will be the longest road tunnel in Europe moving through Dublin’s rocky, boggy soil – a huge engineering task. Great. Construction was begun with alacrity.

Problem: the tunnel was begun and drilled and halfway through when some bright boy discovered it was juuuuust a few inches too short for the new diesel cargo trucks. Fixing the problem would cost hundreds of millions of euro.

Dublin planning became a bit of a laughingstock. Well, good news, the tunnel is finally set to open on December 20. The first traffic through will not be wheeled, however, a winter run for charity is planned to inaugurate the tunnel. Read about it here.