Tokyo Bay Aqua Line Tunnel | Underwater Tunnel In Japan


The Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line also known as the Trans-Tokyo Bay Expressway, is an expressway that is mainly made up of a bridge tunnel combination across Tokyo Bay in Japan. It connects the city of Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture with the city of Kisarazu in Chiba Prefecture.
Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line is a 15.1 kilometer long toll road, .From the Kisarazu side, there is a 4.4 kilo meter long bridge, which connects to a roughly 9.5 kilometer long undersea tunnel before reaching the Kawasaki side. On the artificial island at the point where the bridge links to the tunnel, there is a parking and rest area called Umihotaru, one of very few such marine parking areas in the world. From the top level of the Umihotaru building, which was designed to resemble a luxury cruise ship, visitors can enjoy a spectacular 360-degree panoramic view, including Yokohama Bay Bridge, the skyscrapers of Tokyo's Shinjuku district.
UmiHotaru means Sea Firefly was given the name because it has the appearance of a ray of light coming out from the water. It is not your typical rest area. There are five floors of restaurants, shops, and cafes, as well as a viewing deck on the top
Outdoor stairs lead down from the 5th floor to sea level. From there, the views are just as amazing. A huge monument stands close by the sea. It looks like a giant piece of abstract art but actually, it's the drilling surface of one of the machines used in carving the Aqua Line Tunnel.
The tunnel diameter is the world's largest for an underwater shield tunnel used for motor vehicle traffic. The cross-section diameter to the outside of the segment lining is 13.9 m, and the inner diameter of 11.9 m provides for two lanes of traffic in both directions.

Up to 285 LED lights were installed in the project, which is expected to cut power consumption by 40 percent, and reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent or approximately the size of 2.5 soccer fields .

Tokyo Bay Aqua-line is a bridge and tunnel construction that extends across Tokyo Bay and links Kanagawa with Chiba. It opened in 1997 after over 20 years of planning and 9 years of construction and a cost of ¥1.4 trillion. With the journey from Kawasaki to Kisarazu now taking just 15 minutes, the highway plays a vital economic role in integrating these two areas of prime industrial importance.

свернуть