I have to be honest; when I was cruising around Los Angeles and saw that the Swedish company Skanska was working on the new light rail system I started to giggle and thought to myself “Oh Dear! Well, some delay must already be expected, right?”.
The reason: the Hallandsås Project
Skanska started the construction in April of 1993, the goal was to drill a 5.4 mile tunnel through the ridge, it was gonna take a couple of years to complete the project and it was gonna help high speed and heavy freight train pass the ridge and connect northern Scandinavia with the rest of Europe and reduce heavy freight traffic on the roads.
I visited the construction site a couple of weeks after the project started in April -93, saw the huge drill and everyone was very excited about it.
Then BOOM! About 20 feet in, the huge drill got stuck and broke down. What followed was years and years of problems, like huge issues. The ridge started to leak a crazy amount of groundwater, another company came in and pumped the ridge full of a chemical that was supposed to patch up and stop the water, which in turns resulted in live stock dying and farmers having to throw away their harvest. About halfway through, the project was put on hold for 8 years. Good times!
My grandpa said “fuck it, why don’t we make what we have in to the worlds largest wine cellar instead?” but nobody listen.
After years of investigation and cleaning up after the disaster (it wasn’t actually as bad as media made it out to be, but the reputation was down the drain), which resulted in new environmental policies (office staff can’t even use a glue stick in the office as it’s not matching the policy) together with some brilliant engineering and a new drill, Skanska got back on the project, and today, Holy Crap! 20 years later was the final break through!
I learned today that I shouldn’t blame Skanska for this whole fiasco and I am sure they are doing a great job at the LA light rail…
We went to the project exhibit and got to see the final break through over a live streaming.
I wasn’t thinking so much about it at first, but as they got closer, I got more and more excited about it!
You can see the drill, they are through, how awesome! They are expecting the first passenger train to run through the tunnel in 2015, I can’t wait!
We celebrated with “fika” after – coffee and cupcake.
This is what it looked like back in 1993 when they started.
A replica of the new drill “Åsa”, she conquered the Hallandsås and is retiring now.
You could take a piece of the ridge with you home, just like you could’ve taken a piece of the Berlin Wall with you home back in 1989. I’ve been running up and down this freaking ridge so many times in my life, I didn’t really feel the need of bringing a piece of it home. Sadly, someone thought it was an ashtray. I have no respect for smokers.
