You haven't mentioned the greatest objection to the Isle of Wight tunnel: that it might provide a way for disease-ridden foreign grey squirrels to cross onto the island and wipe out the plucky native red squirrels!
They wanted to build a rail tunnel linking Gosport to Portsmouth and couldn’t manage it.
What you propose is vastly more ambitious.
Come to think of it, a TBM from Cowes to Portsmouth could turn left and finish in Gosport doing both.
But bottom line is the IoW is too small to need cars. it could easily operate with a network of cycle ways and trams, with a few Ubers for the less able.
Would a private developer build such a tunnel? Would the financials make sense, and allow the investors and lenders to make a return commensurate with the risk? If so, seems like a no brainer. if it needs to be publicly funded, then this project needs to be stacked up against all others (eg HS2 extension).
You haven't mentioned the greatest objection to the Isle of Wight tunnel: that it might provide a way for disease-ridden foreign grey squirrels to cross onto the island and wipe out the plucky native red squirrels!
I don't know whether you've ever tried to get to the M27 from Gosport, but ....
Ha ha, yeah the fantasy plan includes a new spur road off the M27 but it wouldn't surprise me if that proved harder than the tunnel part.
They wanted to build a rail tunnel linking Gosport to Portsmouth and couldn’t manage it.
What you propose is vastly more ambitious.
Come to think of it, a TBM from Cowes to Portsmouth could turn left and finish in Gosport doing both.
But bottom line is the IoW is too small to need cars. it could easily operate with a network of cycle ways and trams, with a few Ubers for the less able.
Would a private developer build such a tunnel? Would the financials make sense, and allow the investors and lenders to make a return commensurate with the risk? If so, seems like a no brainer. if it needs to be publicly funded, then this project needs to be stacked up against all others (eg HS2 extension).