A new railway could link Africa to Europe by 2030
North Africa could be connected to Europe through a tunnel in a few years (Picture: Getty)
Flying from Europe to North Africa might take a few hours, but in some years there could be a completely new route – involving a high-speed railway.
Plans are being discussed for a new underwater tunnel that could connect Spain to Morocco ahead of the 2030 World Cup.
The ambitious project could see the north African country, which is hosting the football tournament with Spain and Portugal, connected to Europe for the first time.
Currently, the Moroccan National Company for Strait Studies said it was figuring out the financial and strategic elements required to actually build the tunnel.
So far, we know that the distance of the underwater portion of tunnel would span 28km, while the deepest point would be 475m below sea level (1,550ft) .
The journey would connect Punta Paloma, in southern Spain to Malabata, east of Tangier in northern Morocco.
The ambitious new plans have been made possible since Morocco opened a high-speed railway (Picture: Getty Images)
The Spanish Society for Fixed Communication Studies across the Strait of Gibraltar (SECEGSA) predicts that the tunnel could facilitate travel for 12.8 million passengers per year.
It could also become a vital trade crossing, potentially transporting 13 million tonnes of cargo, according to SECEGSA.
The tunnel may connect existing railways between Spain and Morocco, including Morocco’s Al Boraq high-speed railway, built in 2018.
While flights from Spain to Morocco currently take around two hours, the driving route goes up to 12 and includes a ferry.
With this new tunnel, the seamless new journey would take around five hours.
The tunnel could see journeys from Spain to Morocco in just five hours (Picture: Getty Images)
While this might sound like an exciting new project in aid of the upcoming World Cup, a rail network like this has been discussed for almost 100 years.
Plans for a rail network for the Strait of Gibralter – a narrow strait that connects the landform between Africa and Europe via ferries – was first introduced in 1930.
But engineers discovered that the seabed material was made up of extremely hard rock, making it impossible to form a tunnel between the two using technologies at the time.
Talks of the tunnel restarted in 1979, when the Spanish and Moroccan government appointed a joint committee to work out the logistics of the plan.
Since then, no work was carried out in aid of the tunnel, but with Morocco winning the World Cup bid, plans have resurfaced.
It also looks more possible thanks to the opening of Morocco’s Al Boraq high-speed railway which connects Casablanca to Tangier, the first of its kind in Africa.
The next World Cup will be shared between U.S, Canada and Mexico(Picture: FRANCK FIFE/AFP via Getty Images)
It might sound like 2030 is ages away but it’s actually only two World Cups away – with North American countries, USA, Canada, plus Mexico, hosting the 2026 one.
The 2026 tournament marks the first World Cup to be hosted by three countries, which will be true of the 2030 tournament too.
The pan-North American World Cup will feature 16 cities across the continent.
Games will be held in 11 locations across the USA; Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle.
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