Tunnels (some famous examples)
Gotthard Base Tunnel
The Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) is a railway tunnel under construction in
Switzerland. With a planned length of 57 km (35 miles) and a total of 153.5
km of tunnels, shafts and passages planned, it will be the longest railway
tunnel in the world upon completion, ahead of the current longest, the
Seikan Tunnel. The project is designed to feature two separate tunnels
containing one track each. The tunnel is part of the Swiss AlpTransit
project, also known as New Railway Link through the Alps NRLA which also
includes the Lötschberg Base Tunnel between the cantons of Berne and
Valais. Like the Lötschberg tunnel, it is intended to bypass winding
mountain routes and establish a direct route suitable for high speed rail
and heavy freight trains. On completion it is expected to decrease the
current 3.5 hours travel time from Zürich to Milan by one hour. The two
portals will be near the villages of Erstfeld, Canton Uri and Bodio, Canton
Ticino. Completion has been projected for 2015 but due to delays the tunnel
may only be completed as late as 2017. Nearby are two more St. Gotthard
Tunnels: the 1882 railway tunnel and the 1980 road tunnel.
See http://www.answers.com/topic/gotthard-base-tunnel
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel is a 50.5 km-long rail tunnel beneath the English
Channel at the Straits of Dover, connecting Folkestone, Kent in England to
Coquelles near Calais in northern France. A long-standing and very
expensive megaproject that saw several false starts, it was finally
completed in 1994.
In 2005, 8.2 million passengers travelled through the tunnel on Eurostar
while in the same year Eurotunnel carried 2,047,166 cars, 1,308,786 trucks
and 77,267 coaches on its shuttle trains.
In September 2006, English, Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWS)
announced that due to cessation of UK-French government subsidies of
£52 million per annum to cover the Channel Tunnel "Minimum User Charge" (a
subsidy of around £13,000 per train, at a traffic level of 4,000 trains per
annum), that freight trains post 30 November would presently stop running.
EWS commented that the equivalent charge for the same distance from UK
Network Rail would be £300, but that at current traffic levels the charge
was effectively £8,000 per train. Accepting that
the Channel Tunnel was a special case, and in light of UK Department of
Industry intransigence, EWS said that they could not economically justify
running trains to their customers in light of the higher charges. EWS
commented that they believed that the UK Government's position was in part
being defined by the current economic state and future of the Channel
Tunnel operator, and its negotiations on refinancing its debt.
See also Wikipedia.