December 2010
Korea’s Geoga Bridge, the Busan Geoje Fixed Link opened to traffic on Tuesday 14 December. The scheme reduces journey times between Korea's south coast city of Busan and the island of Geoje - a tourist hot-spot and home to the country's biggest shipbuilding yards. Travel time has been reduced from around 2 hours and 10 minutes to just 50 minutes.
This world-class project includes an 8.2km, four-lane highway that consists of two separate segments: a 4.5km multi-pylon bridge named the Geoga Grand Bridge and a 3.7km-long immersed tunnel named the Gadeok Tunnel. The tunnel carries traffic at a depth of up to 48m below sea level to avoid large container ships, and is the deepest of its type in the world.
The project has been under construction since 2004. And nearly 2,000 people, including President Lee Myung-bak and Busan mayor Hur Nam-sik, gathered at the bridge to celebrate its successful completion.
Halcrow, in association with Tunnel Engineering Consultants of the Netherlands, provided the Daewoo-led contracting organisation with continuous high level on-site technical advice throughout the design and construction of the link.
Recently, the Gadeok Tunnel was Highly Commended in the Major Tunnelling Project category at the inaugural New Civil Engineer (NCE) International Tunnelling awards.