Antwerp in Belgium. It’s a place known for its fine art, fashion,
and a busy port that made it the centre of the world’s diamond trade.
What do I know about diamonds?
Don't they come from Antwerp?
And yet it’s not all glitz and glamour here, and you only have to go for a drive to find out why.
Yes, this beautiful old city has a big traffic problem — one
that’s impacting not just local people and industries but the rest of Europe, too.
But thanks to some incredible underground construction methods, Antwerp is now on course
to complete a massive piece of infrastructure it’s been trying to finish for decades.
It's big.
The area surrounding the city is becoming one epic building site,
creating a line-up of the most impressive engineering this country has ever attempted.
Sites like this are why I love construction.
From sunken river tunnels to routes stacked inside a canal and massive new parks, sit back
and get ready for a deep dive into one of Europe’s most important — and lesser-known — megaprojects.
There aren’t many European cities better placed for international trade than Antwerp.
It has the Netherlands to the North, Germany to the East,
Brussels to the South and to the West that big old patch of water known as the North Sea.
Antwerp has one of the world’s major seaports.
Huge highways from those other countries and cities all lead here,
converging in a single stretch of tarmac on the outskirts known as the Antwerp Ring Road.
But hold on a minute, isn't a ring-road supposed to be ring-shaped?
Well, yes, and because this one isn't,
getting from A to B by car can be a frustrating experience.
In 2022 drivers spent 61 hours in traffic on average — thanks
in part to that unfinished ring road.
The two current tunnels under the river have become bottlenecks,
and congestion has spread into residential areas.
If all of that wasn’t bad enough,
the road is also a crucial element of the Trans-European Transport Network —
connecting Paris and Amsterdam along the North Sea-Mediterranean Corridor.
But things are about to change. Antwerp is finally putting the last jigsaw piece into
place with the fantastically-named Oosterweel Link project – a set of building works that
should be simple but really aren’t, creating hassle for construction teams and residents,
and great material for a construction YouTube channel.
A lot of the challenge here is down to geography.
First off, there’s a river in the way — and any attempt to complete the ring
would have to contend with another watery obstacle — the Albert Canal.
It’s why this is being called Belgium’s “project of the century” – first put forward way back
in the mid-1990s and now being developed by Lantis on behalf of the Flemish government.
All up this is much more than just a boring ring road like the UK’s M25.
Here, there are a lot of tunnels being built in some very unusual ways.
Now this massive project is taking a lot of time,
money and expertise. And there’s still a long road ahead.
Looking at the wider sector, analysts say it could still take another year
for Belgium’s construction activity to rebound to pre-pandemic levels.
Investors in every surrounding sector have been affected. That’s caused savvy
ones in the highest tax brackets to invest more in alternate markets,
where assets like fine art have thrived in even the most devastating economic downturns.
Their near-zero correlation to traditional
equities allows them to move independently from the market.
That's where today’s video sponsor Masterworks comes in.
During a tumultuous time for stocks and real estate, they were able to
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Shares of art from the biggest names on the scene–Basquiat, Banksy, Picasso, and more.
Each of their sales have delivered a profit thus far,
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Now, let’s get back to Antwerp’s massive infrastructure upgrade
and exactly what’s involved in it.
As our regular viewers will know, building infrastructure in the middle of an existing
city isn’t easy and as you can imagine there’s a lot going on here – but we’ve lined-up a
banging tour of the engineering highlights for you, without too much Belgian waffle.
First up, there’s the Scheldt Tunnel,
a huge new tunnel that’s being dug — funnily enough — under the River Scheldt.
And this massive site behind me is where the portal to that tunnel is being excavated.
When you actually come to the construction site, you’re just struck by the scale of this project.
The excavation that they’ve dug is huge, the engineering is huge and everywhere you look
it’s just a hive of activity and stuff happening. It’s mesmerising to watch.
This massive tunnel is a key part of completing the ring,
helping drivers – and cyclists – get under the river.
Yes, not only is this a six-lane tunnel for
cars — three in each direction — there’s also a six-metre-wide tube just for bikes.
First of all we had to excavate a huge construction pit going up
to 25m below the surface. That meant dewatering of the soil, excavating.
And from the moment we had this construction pit ready we could
start building the actual tunnel. And that is what we are building at this moment.
What’s also impressive about this part of the project is the way that new tunnel is being built,
using what is my favourite tunnelling technique — all because it makes for
some truly epic engineering — the immersed tube method.
The immersed tube method is quite simply a masterclass in construction and engineering.
To create the 1,800-metre link, eight huge segments — each
weighing about 60,000 tonnes — will need to be slotted together under the water.
First the team excavated a huge new hole in Zeebrugge,
about 100 kilometres away from Antwerp where there’s a lot more space. Within it they’re
constructing eight enormous new concrete tunnel segments.
When ready, special seals will close off their openings at each end. This
vast hole will be flooded with water and the segments will be floated to the surface.
Tug boats will then be attached and – when the right weather window opens in mid-2025 – each
of the segments will be pulled slowly through the sea 180-kilometres around
the coast, through a part of the Netherlands and down into Antwerp.
Once there, and working around the shipping schedules,
each segment will be lowered into a new trench on the seabed.
The water between each segment will be pumped out creating a vacuum that
pulls them together to create a watertight seal.
The sealed ends of each segment can then be removed,
it all gets buried under the river bed, and you have a tunnel.
Wow, you see these things on paper but it’s not until you come and stand in front of
them that you realise how massive they are. This thing is insane, it’s like a building.
That’s a highway tunnel, that’s the service tunnel,
another highway tunnel and then another bike tunnel.
You wouldn’t think it’s gonna float but it is gonna float all the way from here
down to Antwerp, and then be sunk under the water and connect a city. It’s incredible.
Back on the portal site here in Antwerp you can see they’re getting ready for
those immersed tube tunnel sections that I just showed you to arrive here at the site.
So what’s being constructed at the end of a new roadway is an
exact replica of those segments I just showed you.
Same tunnels arranged in the same way with exactly the same dimensions.
Cars will come off the existing roadway up there, drive down into this cutting,
start coming into this section of tunnel and then drive into those
immersed tube tunnel segments without even realising it and head on under the river.
The construction of this tunnel alone is an immense procedure that demands insane levels of
accuracy – a dynamic that’s really energising the amazing team tasked with building it.
The quality has to be very good. We have a lot of people who are checking, measuring,
making sure that everything is in the right place. Because once the water
is filled here in the building dock we can’t do anything again.
Immersed tube tunnels are nothing new but they're normally built in a straight line.
This route has a bend in it, which is why each of the segments,
like the one I'm currently standing in, are being built with a noticeable curve.
At the other end of the tunnel is the new Oosterweel Junction. Here, traffic will
briefly appear above ground, either heading up to the port or down into another new set of tunnels.
To make it less visible from a distance, the entire junction is being sunk into the landscape.
Next, connecting the Oosterweel Junction to the ring road will be these — the Canal Tunnels.
Four 2.5-kilometre tubes under the Albert Canal, stacked two-by-two.
That is not a normal way to build a tunnel, but they’re doing it this way so drivers can
head in one of two directions once they join up with the main ring road just down there.
Another reason is to save horizontal space in this narrow waterway that’s
used by big ships – preserving the necessary depth for them.
To integrate the existing ring road with the new tunnels,
a key part of it — this massive viaduct beside me — is having to be demolished.
Replacing it will be — yep, you guessed it — yet more tunnels running under the
canal and a huge new area covered in parks, cycle tracks and walking paths.
But before the viaduct is taken down, a temporary bypass must be built next
to it first, keeping traffic moving while the tunnelling work takes place.
We have a lot of obstacles underground because it’s also the area where the old
city walls were situated. We have to build across the canal also.
We are working adjacent to the existing bridge so the traffic has to be maintained.
And on the other hand we are very close to the residential area.
So it’s a challenge to keep the public supporting us.
Now, as we conclude our waffle-free tour you might
be nervously wondering how much all of this is going to cost.
Well in total, the project is expected to come in around €7BN,
which is about USD $7.6BN at the time of filming.
Most of that is being borrowed from the Flemish Government, but the European Investment Bank
is also putting in half a billion Euros. The money will be paid back using tolls.
Overall, there’s been a lot going on around the city since work began in 2018,
and there’s still a lot to do to reach the 2030 target for completion.
Why 2030? Because this project is part of a much bigger initiative to try and
make Antwerp safer to navigate and easier to access, with more green transport options.
Cleverly called Route Plan 2030,
its aim is to reduce the city’s proportion of car journeys from 70% down to 50%.
The rest will be done via more sustainable means,
like public transport, cycling, electric scooters or walking.
One of the main buildings constructed for the Oosterweel was a massive new Park and Ride,
where people can ditch their cars and jump on a tram heading to the city centre.
It’s all very positive stuff,
but this project was first put forward way back in 1996, so why has it taken so long?
Well, the short answer is it took over a decade to decide which way to do it.
The previous plan was to have a bridge instead of those canal tunnels — and with
a 1.5km length and 150-metre height, it would’ve been an absolute beast.
Although many businesses favoured the idea, in 2009, the public voted against it in a referendum.
There were concerns about the environmental impact of a major new road close to homes,
and some felt the idea was being forced on them by Brussels.
They might have also been put off by plans to call it the Lange Wapper.
In hindsight that maybe wasn't such a great name for an infrastructure project.
If you’re not familiar with Flemish folklore,
it refers to a giant who towered over the people of Antwerp and tormented them —
a figure immortalised in this rather interestingly-shaped statue.
Finally, after years of debate and consultation, in 2014 the government of Flanders — the region
of Belgium where Antwerp is located — approved the plan that’s now underway.
It’s quite impressive. Such kind of tunnels
are being built once every 30 years in Belgium. So, it’s big.
It may have taken a long time to get going and there’s some significant engineering
ahead to say the least – but now there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Within the next ten years we will change the city and its surroundings,
so being part of that is quite an honour.
It’s something to be proud of. Later in a few years, when I drive through the
tunnel with my children, I will be able to say ‘Look, that’s what Daddy did.’
Completing a project like this was never going to be easy, but thanks to some exceptional
engineering, the city now looks set to finally finish what was started all those years ago.
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