Finest Bay Area Development has signed a memorandum of understanding with three Chinese companies, as part of plans to build the 100 km (60 mile) double undersea train tunnel from Tallinn in Estonia to Helsinki in Finland.

China Railway International Group, China Railway Engineering Company and China Communications Construction Company will work on the final design and building of the Tallinn-Helsinki tunnel with the backing of financier Touchstone Capital Partners. In March of this year China’s Touchstone Capital Partners signed a memorandum of understanding with the project’s developer, FinEstBayArea Development, to provide EUR15 billion of funding.

The agreement in principal will give the company a minority stake in the tunnel and two-thirds in debt. The new partners were needed as Finland and Estonia had limited resources in tunnel boring and high-speed train technologies.

Construction of the project, which aims to link the two capital cities via a tunnel running beneath the Gulf of Finland, will cut the journey time from two hours by ferry to around 20 minutes by train.

The Tallinn-Helsinki tunnel has not yet been backed by the Estonian or Finnish governments or the European Union.  Click here, ee/12 and fi/25 for tunnelbuilder archive. Visit https://finestbayarea.online. 29/19.