Let’s be real. If you’ve spent any amount of time staring at the seatback in front of you during a grueling seven-hour flight over the Atlantic, you’ve probably had the same thought. "Why can't we just drive this?" It sounds simple enough in our heads. We have the Channel Tunnel. We have massive bridges in China that span miles of open water. So, why haven't we built a London to New York tunnel yet?
It's a question that pops up on Reddit and in engineering forums every few months like clockwork. People love the idea of a high-speed vacuum train—a Hyperloop of sorts—whisking them from Piccadilly Circus to Times Square in under an hour. No TSA. No jet lag. Just a smooth, subterranean ride.
But once you start crunching the actual numbers and looking at the geology of the Atlantic Ocean floor, the dream starts to fall apart pretty fast. Honestly, calling it a "challenge" is the understatement of the century. It’s a literal impossibility with the technology we have sitting in our toolboxes in 2026.
The Massive Scale of the London to New York Tunnel
To understand why a London to New York tunnel is currently relegated to the realm of science fiction, you have to look at the sheer distance. We aren't talking about crossing the English Channel, which is a measly 21 miles at its narrowest point. We are talking about 3,400 miles of unforgiving, deep-sea terrain.
The deepest part of the Atlantic along a direct path reaches depths of over 12,000 feet. For context, the Channel Tunnel sits about 250 feet below sea level. The pressure at the bottom of the Atlantic is immense—about 5,000 pounds per square inch. Most current tunneling boring machines (TBMs) would be crushed like soda cans before they even finished the first mile.
Then there is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This is a massive underwater mountain range where tectonic plates are actively pulling apart. Building a rigid structure across a volcanic rift zone is, frankly, a recipe for disaster. You'd have to design a tunnel that can stretch, bend, and survive magma seeps. We just aren't there yet.
What about a floating tunnel?
Some engineers, including researchers at firms like Arup and various transatlantic consortia over the years, have floated the idea of a "Submerged Floating Tunnel" (SFT). Instead of digging into the rock, you’d tether a giant tube about 100 feet below the surface.
It stays away from the crushing pressure of the deep ocean floor. It stays below the reach of even the biggest cargo ships. Sounds smart, right?
👉 See also: What Is Hack Meaning? Why the Internet Keeps Changing the Definition
Well, sort of. You still have to deal with the currents. The North Atlantic is home to some of the most powerful underwater currents on the planet. Keeping a 3,000-mile-long pipe stable while thousands of tons of water push against it every second is a nightmare. Plus, you’d need tens of thousands of anchors tethered to the seafloor, which brings us right back to the problem of extreme depth and pressure.
The Price Tag That Breaks the World
Money talks. Usually, it screams.
Estimates for a London to New York tunnel are basically just educated guesses because the scale is so unprecedented. However, most experts, including those who have analyzed mega-projects for the World Economic Forum, suggest a price tag between $12 trillion and $50 trillion.
To put that in perspective, the entire GDP of the United States is around $27 trillion. You would effectively have to spend the entire economic output of the world's largest economy for two years just to link two cities.
Even if you charged $5,000 per ticket, it would take centuries to break even. No private company is touching that. No government is going to tax its citizens into oblivion for a train ride to Manhattan, especially when flights (even with carbon taxes) are relatively cheap and getting faster with the rebirth of supersonic travel like Boom Supersonic’s Overture.
The Oxygen and Safety Problem
Let's say we found the money. Let's say we found a way to bridge the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. How do you keep people alive?
In a tunnel that long, ventilation becomes a life-or-death engineering hurdle. You can't just open a window. You would need massive artificial islands every 50 miles or so across the entire ocean just to house air scrubbers and emergency escape shafts.
✨ Don't miss: Why a 9 digit zip lookup actually saves you money (and headaches)
Building 60 or 70 "islands" in the middle of the North Atlantic—some of the roughest water on Earth—is a project bigger than the tunnel itself. If a train breaks down 1,500 miles from land, how do you get people out? You can't just send an ambulance. You’re in a vacuum-sealed pipe under the sea. The logistics of a rescue mission in that environment are terrifying to think about.
Why We Keep Talking About It
If it’s so impossible, why does the London to New York tunnel keep appearing in news headlines and "future of tech" YouTube videos?
It's because of the Vactrain concept. Proposed as far back as the early 20th century, and popularized again by Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Alpha paper in 2013, the idea is to remove all air from a tube to eliminate drag.
In a vacuum, a maglev train could theoretically travel at 5,000 mph. At that speed, you’re in New York in under an hour. It’s the "Space Race" of our generation—a goal so audacious that even failing at it produces incredible spin-off tech. We learn more about materials science, automated boring, and deep-sea sensors every time a serious study is conducted on long-range tunneling.
But there’s a massive gap between a 5-mile test track in the desert and a 3,000-mile umbilical cord under the Atlantic.
The Real Competition: Supersonic and Hypersonic Flight
The nail in the coffin for the London to New York tunnel isn't actually the engineering—it’s the competition.
While we are struggling to dig through rock, aerospace companies are making massive leaps. We are currently seeing a renaissance in high-speed flight.
🔗 Read more: Why the time on Fitbit is wrong and how to actually fix it
- Boom Supersonic is aiming for Mach 1.7.
- Hermeus is working on Mach 5 hypersonic flight.
- SpaceX has long teased "Point-to-Point" Starship travel.
Why would a government spend $20 trillion on a tunnel that can be bombed, leak, or suffer from earthquakes, when you can just fly over the water in 90 minutes? Air is "free" infrastructure. The ocean floor is a multi-trillion-dollar liability.
What Actually Happens Next?
Don't expect a tunnel. At least, not in our lifetimes.
However, we are going to see "mini" versions of this tech. Norway is currently working on submerged floating bridges for its fjords. If they succeed, that’s the proof of concept. If we can't build a 1-mile floating tunnel in a calm fjord, we definitely aren't doing it in the Atlantic.
The London to New York tunnel remains the ultimate "What If." It represents our desire to shrink the world, to ignore the boundaries of nature, and to connect the two great financial hubs of the West. But for now, and for the foreseeable future, the only way you're getting to JFK from Heathrow is through the clouds.
Actionable Reality Check
If you are tracking the progress of trans-oceanic travel, stop looking at boring machines and start looking at these three areas:
- Submerged Floating Tunnel (SFT) Trials: Watch Norway’s E39 coastal highway project. This is the "canary in the coal mine." If they can't make a floating tunnel work there, the Atlantic dream is dead.
- Supersonic Flight Certification: Follow the FAA’s rulings on overland supersonic flight. If the "sonic boom" problem is solved by companies like NASA (with the X-59), the economic incentive for a tunnel vanishes completely.
- Boring Speed Innovations: Keep an eye on The Boring Company or its competitors like Prufrock. We need a 10x or 100x increase in tunneling speed and a massive reduction in cost before a transatlantic project moves from "insane" to "merely impossible."
Ultimately, the Atlantic is just too deep, too wide, and too angry for our current level of civilization to pave over—or under.