Swiss complete world's longest tunnel (BBC News 15/10/2010)

[whole diary]

[JayMac]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Engineers have drilled through the last remaining rock to complete the world's longest tunnel, under the Swiss Alps.

The 10m-diameter drill-head tore through the rock to cheers and applause from watching workers.

The 57km (35 mile) Gotthard rail tunnel has taken 14 years to build and is not likely to open before the end of 2016.

But it is expected to revolutionise transport across Europe, providing a high-speed link between the north and south of the continent.

Eventually, trains will travel through it at speeds of up to 250km/h (155mph).

Journey times between Zurich and Milan are likely to be slashed by as much as one-and-a-half hours.

The event, which took place shortly after 1415 (1215 GMT), was broadcast live on Swiss TV and watched by transport ministers across Europe.

The 9.8bn Swiss franc (^6.4bn; $10.3bn) project will take up to 300 trains each day underneath the Alps.

The length of the Gotthard tunnel exceeds the 53.8km Seikan rail tunnel linking the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido and the 50km Channel Tunnel linking England and France.

Many of the workers watched as the two ends of the tunnel met 2,000m underground.

The foreman lifted a statue of Saint Barbara, the patron saint of miners, through a small hole in the drilling machine.

Some 2,500 people have worked on the tunnel and eight people have lost their lives during its construction.

A minute's silence was held as the workers' names were read out during a ceremony marking the tunnel's completion.

Chief construction officer Heinz Ehrbar said that amid all the celebration, it was "very important that we remember that not all of our workers can be with us, but we are proud and we will be very happy this evening."

Switzerland is one of Europe's major junctions for freight and the tunnel is part of a larger project aiming to move cargo off the roads and on to rail.

Improvements on the northern and southern approaches to the new Gotthard tunnel have been postponed, so trains will run on existing track there.

Unprecedented

The area already has the 34km Loetschberg rail tunnel, which opened in 2007, but this latest engineering feat is being hailed by leading members of the Swiss government as being of unprecedented significance.

Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger said that the Gotthard Tunnel would become a spectacular and grandiose monument with which all tunnels would be compared.

Two other transalpine tunnels are planned to exceed 50km but are unlikely to be complete until the 2020s. One tunnel will connect Lyon in France to Turin in Italy and another is due to replace the Brenner road tunnel between Austria and Italy.

The head of the Swiss Federal Transport Office, Peter Fueglistaler, said he was very happy with the achievement: "In Switzerland we are not a very emotional people, but if we have the longest tunnel in the world that's... very, very emotional."

A selection of pictures of the achievement can be found here.

[Henry]

  why can't the British ?

     http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20101015/twl-job-done-world-s-longest-tunnel-comp-3fd0ae9.html

[ReWind]

Probably because we don't need a 35 mile long tunnel here.

[willc]

Because the Swiss are capable of having a calm, rational debate about things. In this case, the number of lorries crossing the country between Germany and Italy, before they voted in referendums in the 1990s to go ahead with this and the Lotschberg base tunnel, even though the Gotthard tunnel has cost them something like ^800 a head for everyone living in the country. Just imagine trying to get people here to vote for that. What would happen if you had a referendum on building High Speed 2?  

[inspector_blakey]

I'm going to stick my neck out a little here: I really have no patience with "everything's better abroad" syndrome.

a) We don't need to burrow a tunnel of that length through anything, and the very suggestion that we possible should in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) is rather silly.
b) I would like to think that, were we to have a referendum on HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)), the result would quite rightly be a resounding "no", seeing as we seem to be poising ourselves to spunk billions of pounds on something that, although it might be nice to have and look all shiny and high-tech, is frankly not that necessary. Whilst I'm sure that the burghers of London and Birmingham will be delighted to have journey times that are already quick shaved by 20 minutes, I maintain that were those billions of pounds to be re-allocated and spent across the traditional network they could alleviate all sorts of problems across the country (I'm thinking GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) electrification, Thameslink, new stock for FGW^▸ (First Great Western) and Northern, capacity improvements in the north, etc etc etc). HS2 strikes me as rather analogous to buying a helicopter for your trip to Tesco because your car is a bit ropey. Why spend a modest sum fixing the car when you could p*ss it up the wall on a helicopter, after all?
c) Do you really want the UK to turn into Switzerland? It's certainly a country with some spectacular natural beauty, but that aside it's the most boring place I've ever been - I've never been so keen to get the hell out of a place as I was after a Monday morning in Zurich waiting for an afternoon flight back home!

[JayMac]

↑What he said↑

And may I say, very well put, blakey. Even if the language was a bit fruity in places!

[willc]

And completely ignores the fact that major transport projects such as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link aka HS1^▸ (High Speed line 1 - St Pancras to Channel Tunnel) - and the motorway network - weren't paid for out of general transport funding.

I don't think Henry, nor I, was actually suggesting we needed a 35-mile tunnel anywhere - though we and the French have already built a 31-mile one. Nor turning the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) into Switzerland, where at least they don't tell you a train is on time when it's actually five or 10 minutes late like this country.

Ask anyone in the rail industry and they will tell you that the key benefit from a high-speed line would not be speed, which everyone goes on and on about here, but extra capacity. Look at the problems over getting any kind of path for extra trains on the ECML^▸ (East Coast Main Line), MML^» (Midland Main Line. - about) and the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line).

France built its first TGV^▸ (Train a Grande Vitesse) line because the existing Paris-Dijon-Lyons line was at full capacity. The reduction in journey times was a bonus.

And the number of people using trains is rising again, while road traffic is falling, which suggests the capacity problem is only likely to get worse. A nice problem to have but a problem that will require a solution. And our low bridges and tunnels mean we can't go down the double-deck trains route without massive expense and disruption.

On the other hand, if rail fares do go up 30-40 per cent in the next few years, as Channel 4 News suggested last night, then people may well get back in their cars and we'll have to build more roads instead of railway line, high-speed or otherwise.

[inspector_blakey]

And completely ignores the fact that major transport projects such as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link aka HS1^▸ (High Speed line 1 - St Pancras to Channel Tunnel) - and the motorway network - weren't paid for out of general transport funding.

Ahh, would that be major projects like GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) electrification or HST^▸ (High Speed Train) replacement then, which as far as I understand it (but I am open to correction by those with a superior knowledge of treasury machinations) were not due to be paid for out of the general transport pot, but yet appear very likely to suffer at the hands of the spending review on Wednesday?

Ask anyone in the rail industry and they will tell you that the key benefit from a high-speed line would not be speed, which everyone goes on and on about here, but extra capacity. Look at the problems over getting any kind of path for extra trains on the ECML^▸ (East Coast Main Line), MML^» (Midland Main Line. - about) and the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line).

I think you and I must be talking to different echelons in the rail industry, because the view of the people I know who work in it has been universal cynicism. More seriously, I don't entirely disagree with you. However, the first stage of HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)), London to Birmingham, will do little more than duplicate the WCML which has had large sums of money spent on upgrades, and is about to have a big capacity boost with new Pendolinos and extensions of many existing units to 11 cars. And even the completed "Y"-shaped route (I think that's what was planned last time I checked, but it seems to be changing every few days) doesn't do much more than duplicate the best existing rail services in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

I have no objection in principle to HS2 (really - I would love to see it built) but there couldn't be a worse time to be proposing to build it than now, in my opinion. On the one hand, the government is cutting money from all departments: just to take a couple of examples from education, tuition fees for university look set to soar and funding for academic research in the UK is likely to take a heavy hit. But on the other hand they're preparing to spend many billions on a gold-plated, new shiny rail line that largely duplicates existing ones.

Now, you can call me politically naive (let's be honest, to all intents and purposes you already have), but I can promise you that to me and many millions of others it looks like a bizarrely distorted set of government priorities.

[Henry]

 Actually, correct me if I am wrong, we were probably building tunnels i.e. (tube) before most countries.
 
 So how many miles of 'tunnel' is the London Underground ?

 I certainly do not suffer from 'everything better abroad' syndrome, given an equal playing field we can compete with
 any nationality with regard to engineering capability.
 But reading the Railway press regarding other European projects , i.e.  trains from Moscow to Nice, perhaps we
 suffer because we are an insignificant little island in the English Channel.

[Chris from Nailsea]

 

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Spending Review: ^1bn rail electrification faces cuts

Rail projects across the Thames Valley are set to be in the firing line in the government's Spending Review.

The BBC understands a ^1bn plan to electrify the Great Western Main Line between London and Swansea, through Berkshire and Oxfordshire, may be axed.

A contract for a new fleet of trains to replace the 35-year-old carriages through Reading could also go.

One passenger group said the area would be hit hard. The Government said nothing had been decided.

Plans to electrify the Great Western Main Line - which would also benefit Wiltshire and Bristol - were attacked by the Conservatives when they were announced by the previous Labour government last year.

While plans to replace Britain's aging fleet of intercity trains, which run through the Thames Valley, were put on hold earlier this year and could be axed altogether in the review.

Chris Irwin, chair of TravelWatch SouthWest, said: "I think we should be worried, we are looking at something like a 40% cut in the money available to subside bus services and train services. There are question marks on electrification and replacing the 35-year-old trains, but that is just the start of it. We are going to see in the next few years fares up. We are going to see less reliable services if the 35-year-old trains aren't replaced. The Thames Valley will be hit hard."

BBC South's transport correspondent Paul Clifton said: "We were promised last year a new generation of intercity trains. If that is cancelled, and almost everyone thinks it will be, are we going to have to survive with these trains for another 20 years?"

He also said many in the industry thought the electrification was also at risk in light of the tight economic situation.

A Department for Transport spokesman said: "Decisions on the future of the Intercity Express Programme and the electrification of the rail network will be made in light of the Spending Review announcement [to be made on Wednesday]."

[willc]

were not due to be paid for out of the general transport pot

Yes they were - that's why they are set to be clobbered. Network Rail's budget and borrowings are part of the general transport pot, whatever the window dressing says. The Government has never classified rail electrification schemes or programmes like the HST^▸ (High Speed Train) replacement as being of major national importance.

new shiny rail line that largely duplicates existing ones

What like the French LGV^▸ (Large Goods Vehicle) routes, like the German Neubaustrecken, like the Italian direttissima, like Spain's linea de alta velocidad. How could they not duplicate existing routes, running as they do between existing population centres which is where you will find passengers for the trains?

And our key rail routes are increasingly short of capacity. So the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) is getting a few more Pendolinos - which will eat up the little remaining capacity. What about LM^▸ (London Midland - recent franchise)'s services, which virgin would cheerfully shunt out of the way if it could, never mind freight? And prospective open-access operators have basically been told that they needn't bother asking for paths - never mind that there aren't any spare 125mph tilting trains anyway.

You completely ignored the MML^» (Midland Main Line. - about) and ECML^▸ (East Coast Main Line), so contemplate the following from the executive summary of Network Rail's East Coast Main Line 2016 Capacity Review Draft for Consultation, published in August.

"Analysis of the aspirations for paths on the ECML against the available capacity on completion of Control Period (CP4^▸ (Control Period 4 - the five year period between 2009 and 2014)) infrastructure schemes has shown that the demand for paths exceeds the capacity available."

That's by 2016. Long before even the first bit of HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) would be available, should it be authorised, never mind reaching the East Midlands and Yorkshire.

The full 42-page document is here http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browseDirectory.aspx?root=%5CRUS%20Documents%5CRoute%20Utilisation%20Strategies&pageid=4449&dir=%5CRUS%20Documents%5CRoute%20Utilisation%20Strategies%5CEast%20Coast%20Main%20Line

What would do you suggest instead? A decade of WCML-style digging on the ECML? Building a second Welwyn viaduct? Quad-tracking north of Peterborough with a second Stoke summit tunnel? Because that's what you're looking at. Or you could just build a new line...