Visiting a tunnel construction site! Hightway A16 building project!

Near the town of Rotterdam, there is a big road building project going on! 11 kilometers of highway is being build and 2,2 km of that is going to be underneath the ground! The tunnel is going underneath roads, parks and they even are constructing the tunnel underneath a river! it's one of the bigger projects under construction at this moment in the Netherlands!

I was invited to go for a tour around the project by the minister of civil engineering!
We started out on top of the tunnel! Here we got the first information about the project! The rain of the last view days, made it a big mess, but we were dressed for it! When the tunnel is finished, it's going to be a big park and recreation area on top of it!

This is Mo, he was our safety officer of the day! Safety is very important on construction sites like this! The company is responsible for every one on site! And if you don't work safe and accidents happen, than the chance that you get a project like this in the future is less likely!

Puddles means reflections! And as photograpghers, we like that very much!

And there is always some one who is willing to go a step further for a nice picture!

But just standing people, who are talking to each other, is a nice sight to!

This is the part of the tunnel witch runs below the river! They constructed in two parts! This to avoid traffic jams on the river! Boat's need to pass here every day!

Its a little hard to see I think, but on the left you see the roof of the tunnel! Its about 4 meters below the waterline!

Can you see the difference in depth? On the left, I am looking in to the construction pit!

Now I am standing on top of the tunnel! In total, there is about 8 meters of concrete and tunnel below me!

We were not aloud to cross the tunnel on foot! They had arraigned a bus for us to drive trough it!
I tried to make some long exposure shots in the bus!

At the other end of the tunnel, they let us out of the bus! Love the typical Dutch clouds in this picture!

In the beginning of the tunnel they made special beams above the road! As you can see, it's designed to make shadow's and light stripes on the road! This works, if you drive underneath it, like a bright flashing light! It makes your eyes adapte more quickly to the darker conditions in the tunnel! And now for us, it was an awesome place to take cool pictures!

I just took one oicture inthe tunnel where the cars are going to drive! Many people were working here an all kinds of vehicles drove around! And considering safety concerns, we were not allowed to walk here for long

We were aloud in the safety and maintenance tunnel! It's in between the two tunnels and all the cables of the tunnel operating system are hide away in here! And if the tunnel is in operation, people could flee in here if there is some kind of accident happening in the tunnel!

This is a part of the total project! It's an 11km new road in between the A20 and the A13, next to the red arrow! the blue circle is the new tunnel! It's cool to see it on google allready! That are working on it since 2019! But project planning started in 2017! The first cars will drive trough it in 2025!

Here is the projects website! There are many pictures and there is a lot of information about the project if you are interested!

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