Building a tunnel under the Dnipro will take at least seven years: expert proposes alternatives for Kyiv

Building a tunnel under the Dnipro will not solve Kyiv’s transport problem in the foreseeable future — design work alone will take at least two years, and construction itself around five.

This was stated by transport planning expert Dmytro Bespalov.

According to Bespalov, current talk of a tunnel “makes no sense whatsoever.” The expert explained that even if the project were launched immediately, the timeline for completion would be extremely long.

“Even if we start now, we will need a minimum of two years for design and a minimum of five years for construction, if everything goes well,” Bespalov noted.

In addition to the time costs, the expert pointed to the financial side of the issue: building the tunnel would require several billion dollars, which Ukraine does not currently have.

“We are not in the best situation right now when it comes to funding. And we have things to spend those billions of dollars on. At the very least, repairing the existing bridges,” he added.

Bespalov stressed that the discussion about a tunnel “does not bring us closer to solving the transport problem of connectivity between the banks of the Dnipro,” and named three measures that should be focused on: protecting bridges with air defense and electronic warfare assets; shifting to remote work from home where possible; and prioritizing traffic flow in dedicated lanes.

The expert separately commented on the idea of physically protecting bridges with nets or concrete, calling it a bad one: according to him, some structures “are in a dilapidated condition and may not withstand the additional weight.”

Reconstruction of an average overpass in Kyiv would cost approximately 600–700 million hryvnias, while building a large bridge across the Dnipro would cost around 15 billion hryvnias. The cost of restoring a damaged bridge depends on the nature and extent of the damage.