New Gotthard tunnel garners worldwide admiration

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/railway-under-the-alps_new-gotthard-tunnel-garners-worldwide-admiration/41463332

by chkuendig • 11 years ago

60 48 11 years ago

noipv42• 11 years ago

I see a countdown timer at the Bellinzona station. Edit. I think the first (regular PASSENGER) train's going to run through the tunnel sometime in Dec 2016.

chkuendig• 11 years ago

First passenger train (filled with VIPs) is gonna be 2nd of June 2016, first passenger train on a regular schedule is sometime on Dec 11.

ZeroGravitas• 11 years ago

Is the water they talk about naturally warm? Is it because it's deep within the earth that it is heated compared with surface water?

fla• 11 years ago

Yes I think so. Geothermal sources are a common occurence inside the alps.

comrade1• 11 years ago

They heat a tropical greenhouse and sturgeon farm with water from another tunnel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropenhaus_Frutigen

They weren't able to dump the water directly into the local river because it would disrupt the native trout, and so they cool it with the greenhouse and farm.

If I remember right the greenhouse and farm were businesses started by the engineers that were on the tunnel project.

The caviar is nice - not as much minerality as normal, but still good texture and taste.

msandford2• 11 years ago

Yes, that's correct. Except for the first 100 feet or so, the deeper you go into the Earth the warmer it gets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient

So while the tunnel is at surface level at the entry and exit points, for the majority of the distance it's many thousands of feet deep. It's about 15 degrees F per 1000 feet, so if it's 5000 feet below the average height of the mountain range then you might expect the tunnel to be 75 degrees F warmer than the surface.

If the average surface temperature is say 50F then adding 75F gets you to 125F which isn't enough to boil water or generate electricity (efficiently) but it's definitely hot enough to warm a lot of things in a meaningful way.

ape4• 11 years ago

It is admirable.

mapt3• 11 years ago

Hits on a pet idea of mine:

We have a major issue with rail transportation in the US. It's most useful in cities in a grade-separated form, but it's simultaneously the hardest to build in cities in a grade-separated form. The number of existing pipelines, power lines, traffic reroutes, building permits, and private property consents required to check out grows to dizzying levels of complexity.

One way to bypass this is to dig deep, deep tunnels. Tunnels far enough down that surface settling doesn't occur, tunnels far enough down to bypass skyscraper pilings. To do this well, though, you need to construct as much of each station as possible in the tube itself, and only sink shafts down to that level, not whole horizontal rooms.

You can do that with a ~20m diameter TBM. You buy this monster of a machine for an exorbitant amount of money, and in exchange you get to leave the walls that it constructs in place, except for some vertical elevators and a vertical stairwell directly to the platform; No blasting, no extensive bit-by-bit excavation, no surface trenches, no access tunnels, no adjusting to separate mud and soil and rock. Just two tracks in a big tube with a bunch of space in between them, and maybe a second level for another pair with an express line.

CPLX• 11 years ago

Of note, the further below the surface train stations are, the more inefficient they are, especially for daily use and commuting type lines. It takes time to get that far down in the ground from the street level. It's less of an issue for long haul transit of course, but in that case there's few stations and they can be big downtown stations anyways.

As someone who grew up in Washington DC and moved to NYC, it was immediately and obviously noticeable. The ability to just hop down a few stairs and jump on a train is a major improvement to convenience. The multiple levels, elevators or long, long escalators, and so on, can double or triple the amount of minutes it takes to go 3-4 stops.

mapt3• 11 years ago

We have available to us high-speed, high-capacity elevators now, standard in large buildings. The DC Metro's escalators were a lot of things, among them great big monumental architectural Statements; But as you and anyone else from the area knows, they were not particularly well thought-out (and we are still paying for that mistake in maintenance problems, wait times, expensive rain shelters, et cetera).

Their progenitor, as I recall, went to the great lengths of riding them aboard a wheelchair every day in a pained attempt to prove to the planning committee that elevators, which would have spoiled his precious vaulted look, were not necessary.

kposehn• 11 years ago

Excellent point!

The Japanese started engineering for this as well when they went through a bonanza of submerging rail lines in Tokyo. At first, they started digging super deep with smaller tunnels (the trains use a linear motor/reaction-rail for much tighter loading gauges). However, they started to realize that it made the the now submerged trains more inefficient to be so deep. More recent lines are elevated or much more shallow.

TylerE4• 11 years ago

The vast majority of american rail infrastructure is based on diesel, not electric trains, which vastly complicates tunnel constructure due to the level of ventilation required.

For instance, the Cascade tunnel in eastern Washington (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Tunnel) can only handle ~one train per hour because they basically have to replace all the air in the tunnel every time, which takes about a half hour even with giant fans.

Tunnels, especially deep ones, are also extraordinarily expensive, that's why modern rail is built on viaducts, not in tunnels, because it's just much much cheaper.

drzaiusapelord• 11 years ago

Urban light rail is almost universally electric. NYC, Chicago, DC, LA, BART, Seattle, Portland, etc. Sounds like a few places need to contemporize still, but in a lot of cities, electric has been the norm for a long time and we can trivially add more tunnels and not worry about exhaust.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

Here is a wonderful study on the costs of light rail and its efficiency versus other forms of mass transit. [1]

Here is a telling quote about why digging deep is the wrong answer.

"Seattle, however, is building an entire light- rail line underground from the University of Washington to downtown Seattle. When completed in 2016, the line is expected to cost $628 million per mile, yet it will not carry any more people per hour than San Diego’s original 1981 light-rail line that cost $17 million per mile.

The total cost of the 3.1-mile subway would be enough to build almost 200 miles of elevated busways at $10 million per lane mile. Seattle’s first light-rail line, which opened in 2007, was also completely separated from streets, costing $175 million per mile (nearly $200 million per mile in today’s dollars)."

[1] http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa750_w...

meatysnapper• 11 years ago

Seattle in all fairness has some of the most incompetent local government of all time. They couldn't govern themselves out of a crackerjack box, if their lives depended on it.

chrismcb• 11 years ago

Seattle thinks that is a great idea...

gadders2• 11 years ago

Meanwhile in London:

Crossrail tunnel already smells of urine

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/crossrail-tunnel-...

jsingleton3• 11 years ago

If you ever wondered where the smell on the DLR at bank comes from.

http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2014/02/02/how-a-tube-statio...

gadders2• 11 years ago

Ha.

They've recently created some new shops at Canary Wharf Tube, and there is now a fancy Neal's Yard shop right where the Gents toilets used to be.

jsingleton3• 11 years ago

Looks pretty impressive and to think some people say tunnelling is boring! It is and it isn't. :)

In other news, Crossrail finished tunnelling today. Not as long as this but still a big project.

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/prime-minister-and-...

msandford2• 11 years ago

Haha, tunneling IS boring! Pun attempted, pun achieved.

jsingleton3• 11 years ago

That was the (intended) joke. Hard to get across in writing. The boring work is over now!

jonah• 11 years ago

"...the Gotthard base tunnel 'broke all the rules' and the excavation was finished nearly a year ahead of schedule."

I'd like to know more about this.

thallian• 11 years ago

In a report from 2006[1] they prognosed a start of normal operations in 2017 with a delay of up to four years but also the possibility of finishing early by one year.

In 2012 they seemed confident to open in 2016, but I can't really find the reasoning for that. As far as I can see there were also cost considerations playing a part in the decision.

Edit: apparently a very difficult Dolostone section was less proplematic than anticipated (again, couldn't find an english source for this)

[1] (in three languages but no english, sorry): http://www.parlament.ch/r/mm/2007/Paginas/mm_2007-04-27_9519...

georgeglue1• 11 years ago

What a strange article. Is there a translation or cultural context? The part about the Japanese "los[ing] face" or the reference to Russian civic culture are two of many puzzling bits.

ngoldbaum2• 11 years ago

Swiss culture is still very insular. As an example of language and imagery that would be seen as quite racist in the US or the rest of Europe, take a look at this poster from the SVP/UDC party, currently the strongest party in the Swiss federal parliament: http://www.20min.ch/schweiz/news/story/22226627

The slogan means "no special rights for foreigners", in protest of a practice that allows foreign residents in switzerland to sign petitions to open up a non-binding resolution in local city councils.

I don't think I've seen such baldly racist imagery from a US political party in my lifetime - it looks like WW2 propoganda.

noipv42• 11 years ago

There's a whole group of expats called Grumpy Expats on FB discussing such issues. https://www.facebook.com/groups/784454428295368/?fref=nf

enjoy-your-stay• 11 years ago

Well, when over 20% of residents in Switzerland at any time are foreign born, you can kind of understand why some of them might feel that somebody needs to fight for their corner.

whyenot• 11 years ago

That seems a little unfair. The SVP are indeed the "strongest party" in the swiss government, but they still only hold 54 out of 200 seats in the National Council. Parties in many other European democracies have expressed equally repellent views in recent years -- the rise of racist anti-immigrant parties is not a problem unique to the swiss by any means.

As an American (who has also spent a lot of time in Switzerland) I agree that it's shocking. But, I think it's also a little understandable. There is a strong desire to preserve swiss culture. Switzerland is a country with a history and culture stretching back into antiquity. In the US, we are a country of immigrants.

smithkl42• 11 years ago

Meanwhile, Seattle can't figure out how to dig their tunnel more than a couple hundred yards without everything breaking down.

TylerE4• 11 years ago

Tunneling is generally a bit simpler well above sea level - the main enemy isn't ROCK, but water, and keeping things dry.

wsc981• 11 years ago

It's also proven to be a challenge in Amsterdam [0]. In The Netherlands (the North-South Line) due to the 'soft' (marsh-like) ground.

---

[0] http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/691-amsterdam-north-south-metro

soperj• 11 years ago

It's a Japanese company doing it no?

Animats• 11 years ago

It's a great project, but that article is a bit deceptive. The breakthrough video is from 2010. Official opening is a year away. The tunnels are finished, with track, power, and signaling almost ready.[1] But the connections to the railway system at both ends aren't ready yet.

As tunnel projects go, it was a long drive, but not an unusually difficult one. Mostly hard rock, some water problems, but not too much water. Many tunneling projects are more about keeping the water out and the roof supported than digging.

Surprisingly, it was just a 4 TBM job, two tubes cut entirely from the ends. Although there are several vertical shafts down to emergency stations, those were not used as TBM starting points. Each TBM had to grind forward for almost 14 years.

[1] https://www.alptransit.ch/en/status-of-the-work/railway-infr...

aselzer• 11 years ago

If they include the Koralm Tunnel on the list, which is under construction, they could as well add the Brenner Basis Tunnel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel) :)

When completed, it will be the world's second largest tunnel, only shorter than this one.

New Gotthard tunnel garners worldwide admiration

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