Why Scots must embrace 'self confidence' and build subsea tunnels for Shetland Islands

COWI, an engineering consultancy rooted in Denmark with operations around the world, turns that self-confidence into those great undertakings, and we have announced today that, along with our long-term partners at Stantec and Mott Macdonald, we have been commissioned by Shetland Islands Council to complete a Shetland Inter-Island Connectivity Study, intended to guide the council’s transport network strategy for the next 30 years.

COWI’s part in this is very specific; to provide Shetland Islands Council with a comprehensive understanding of the technical and financial implications of tunnelling from Mainland Shetland to the outer islands, encompassing geological assessments, environmental impact considerations, engineering challenges, and economic analyses.

As a Scotsman, it has always struck me as somewhat peculiar that it is my fellow Scots, more than any other country in which I operate, who sometimes lack the self-confidence for great undertakings such as tunnelling between our islands. In reality, whether from an engineering or a financial perspective, there is usually nothing enormously challenging involved. And the benefits of tunnelling reach far beyond simply a faster, more reliable and more environmentally friendly transport link than that provided by an ageing, carbon-intensive ferry.

We don’t have to look all that far from our shores to see them. The Faroe Islands have been tunnelling for many decades, based on a strategy of ensuring that those in the outer islands can easily access the capital, Torshavn, and vice versa.

It has been an extraordinarily successful programme. As well as the obvious benefits of moving faster, more reliably and more sustainably around the islands, the tunnels have also allowed for a reconfiguration of public services, making them more efficient to run, with better outcomes.

Most importantly, though, remote islands have repopulated. In Scotland, we have long suffered from depopulation from our island and remote rural communities; tunnelling is proven not only to sustain populations but to increase them.

This is not fantasy. It is not a theoretical exercise. It is real and tangible, it is happening around the world, and it may well happen relatively soon in Shetland.

It needs vision, and it is clear to us at COWI that Shetland Islands Council has it. But most of all, this great undertaking needs self-confidence. Perhaps Shetland’s will light the way for other islands, and the Scottish mainland, to finance and build the large transport projects we’ve talked about for so many years.

- Andy Sloan is the managing director of COWI in the UK