How Faroes' amazing tunnels reveal solution to Scottish island depopulation

While Scotland struggles to build ferries, UK pension funds have been investing in the Faroe Islands’ impressive tunnel-building projects

“Build it and they will come”. A maxim that, in the wrong hands, has left a legacy of white elephants around the country. In the right hands, however, the story can be very different. If you want to see it done well, then look no further than our neighbours to the north west in the Faroe Islands.

Over the last ten years, the archipelago has seen their population grow by ten per cent, in contrast to Scottish islands with communities in decline. A combination of local control of decision-making and strategic investment in infrastructure has contributed to a quite remarkable growth. The Torshavn of today is a different place to the one I last visited in 2015.

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The world's first undersea roundabout opened in the Faroe Islands in 2020The world's first undersea roundabout opened in the Faroe Islands in 2020
The world's first undersea roundabout opened in the Faroe Islands in 2020 | Ryan Blackwood

Scotland’s political class today scraps over crumbling ferry services and construction projects that are embarrassing at best. By contrast, a day spent talking to members of the Logting, the Faroese parliament, this week showed a very different approach.

Under the sea, through mountains

For the last quarter century, the Faroes have built the most remarkable network of tunnels both through mountains and under the sea to deliver a vision into which the whole community has bought – that every community should be able to reach the islands’ capital, Torshavn, in an hour or less.

Lesson number one for Scotland’s decision-makers. If you want to build tunnels, then first build a consensus. And, also, have a vision for what you want to do with them. The Faroese vision has pushed economic growth out from the capital to the out-lying communities in a way that has worked for both.

Some of the most dramatic population growth has come on Vagar as a result of an expanded airport which, in turn, has brought a growing number of tourists. Tunnels are not an end in themselves but a tool that, if used properly, make all sorts of other things possible.

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Later this year, it is expected that the Logting will give the green light to start construction on their most ambitious project yet – a tunnel spanning the 23 kilometres to the island of Suduroy.

Time to take notice

Both in terms of finance and engineering, reaching it by tunnel will be a massive challenge for the Faroese government but the debate amongst politicians there is not about if they should do it but rather about how.

The answer should us sit up and take notice. The early tunnel projects were built as conventional, publicly funded projects. Latterly however, external finance has been sought and won with government guarantees making some remarkable deals possible.

Pension funds in the USA and the UK have invested. That’s right. UK pension funds are funding tunnels in the Faroe Islands while in Scotland we struggle to build ferries that look increasingly like a 20th-century solution to 21st-century challenges. Think about that – especially if your pension fund is administered by Aviva – one of the external investors.

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While ministers and officials in Edinburgh and London see tunnels as some sort of pipedream, our Faroese neighbours have got on with making them a reality.

Alistair Carmichael is Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland

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