The Transatlantic Tunnel is an ambitious project that involves building a tunnel for trains between London and New York, allowing them to travel the distance in less than an hour. The concept has even received support from Elon Musk, reports the Daily Mail.
The transatlantic tunnel could potentially cover the 5,470-kilometer distance between London and New York in just 54 minutes. However, the concept would cost a whopping $19 trillion to implement, which is five times the total gross domestic product of the United Kingdom.
In late 2024, Elon Musk expressed his interest in the project, writing in X that his company, The Boring Company, could build such a tunnel 1,000 times cheaper. While such claims sound highly unrealistic, the key technologies to create such a tunnel already exist.
Thanks to vacuum tubes and magnetic levitation trains, friction can be reduced to almost zero, allowing for a top speed of over 3,000 mph (4,800 km/h) while still ensuring smooth travel.
Although the idea of a transatlantic tunnel has been around for a century, the technology that could make it even remotely feasible, such as magnetic levitation (maglev) trains, has only recently become available. These trains use powerful electromagnets to lift themselves above the tracks. With no direct contact between the train and the rails, friction, which would normally slow them down, is greatly reduced, and top speeds are increased accordingly.
Such trains do not just exist as a concept, but are already in use in countries such as Japan, Germany and China. In particular, China plans to build an extensive network of maglev trains throughout the country, which will run for more than 1 thousand kilometers. The existing maglev trains in China, however, do not reach the speeds claimed in the Transatlantic Tunnel project, and are currently limited to 431 km/h. To achieve higher speeds, maglev trains must work together with vacuum tunnels.
The second creation that could make the Transatlantic Tunnel a reality is the construction of railway tracks in specially designed enclosed structures. By pumping air out of these tunnels, "hyperloop" structures could virtually eliminate the friction caused by air resistance. This could allow trains to reach top speeds well above 600 mph. Elon Musk, in particular, wants to build such a tunnel between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
However, even if it were possible to develop the necessary speed to travel from London to New York in an hour, the most difficult and least realistic element of the project remains building the tunnel itself. In addition to the huge cost, which may not reach the announced $19 trillion, but will still be high, there are also a number of geological conditions that will create problems during construction.
Regardless of how the Transatlantic Tunnel is built, it must pass through the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a vast region of underwater volcanoes formed between the South American and African tectonic plates. The movement between these plates creates a ridge 3 km high and 1,500 km wide, along which lava constantly flows from cracks in the Earth's crust. Crossing this crack with a sealed vacuum tunnel is an extremely difficult engineering challenge.