Tunnel in quake zone?

[vsmith]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Tulyar15

QUOTE: Originally posted by vsmith

They do this in the Chunnel under the English channel, the downside is that it can take a while to load and unload the train. That would likely eliminate any time gain advantages to drive on/off . In the Chunnel the car-train is basicly a ferry on wheels.

In my experiences of taking my car on the Chunnel Shuttle it doesn't take too long to load and unload the shuttle trains; its certainly quicker than the ferries which is why the Chunnel has the lions share of the truck market; a lot of people not in a hurry still use the ferries.

As for earthquake protection, I believe the tunnels on the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) are designed to withstand earthquakes though I'm not sure how.

With regard to fire precautions the Swiss have been running car and truck shuttle trains under the Alps for many years. So naturally Eurotunnel asked them to review their safery precautions. The Swiss were so impressed with Eurotunnel's safety precautions that they revised theirs as a result.

When I rode thru the chunnel it took a while to get on and off, musta been a bad day.

WARNING This is a long reply but bear with it, theres things that need discussing for such a proposal.

BART tunnel tubes under the bay were designed to flex a little during an earthquake, Give that the portion under the bay was mostly thru softer sediment and not bedrock this could be done. The surrounding soil if its water saturated can become like liquid like during an earthquake, liquifaction its called, allowing the soil to move around the tunnel tube, a crush zone if you will. But thru solid bedrock its another matter. Been thru road tunnels in Switzerland that were very long, many miles, like this proposed tunnel, and I doubt they are designed for anymore than to simply survive the shaking until after the quake is over. This is how all hardrock tunnels are designed as there simply is NO way to design a tunnel to withstand physical movement in a solid structure like the bedrock and not fracture along the fault plane, the best you can do is to accept that if the fault your tunnleling thru DOES move, that the tunnel be designed to fracture along the plane...but will not collapse.

Thats the way we design buildings, to withstand a devistating event like an EQ, but we all accept that if its a big one, 7.1 or higher, there WILL be damage, possibly enought to warrent demolishing the building later. BUT if that building survives, even damaged, and the occupants can safely evacuate, then its done its job. Same for any large tunnel design like this, if theres a quake, and it fractures the tunnel shell, moves a couple inches but the tunnel does not collapse and the occupants can escape, its done its job.

Actually being IN the tunnel might be safer than being outside as the rock mass will often act a a solid monolithic structure, it will shake, but as long as the the epicenter or plane movement is not local, and vibration doenst trigger secondary EQs on any other localized fault planes, it will survive quiite well. The trouble here is that most of the mountains are so young geologically, that they are an almost completely fractured mess.

FIre is a far far more dangerous proposition. There was that truck crash in a tunnel is Switzwerland recently that shut down the tunnel, and a bad one in Washington in a small tunnel a few years ago, burned hot enough to MELT the semi truck into a 1" deep pool of metal. The tunnel tube acted as a windtunnel, pulling fresh air in at one side and exhausting out the other end like a blast furnace. THIS is the greatest danger for any long tunnel, rail or auto.

A little FYI more info into earthquake action. If not interested, please skip.....[:)]

Most earthquake occur many miles below the earths surface, the amount of ground rupture occurs most often where the fault movement is under open ground, good example was the 7.3 Landers quake in '92 where the ground was ruptured for many miles in the Calif desert. Yet in the smaller 6.7 Northridge quake in '94 was far more damaging, there was little or no ground ruture at all. It depends if its a slip/strike fault a thust fault or a blind thrust fault. Slip/strike is like the San Andreas fault where the plane of movement extends to the surface. When the fault moves it moves side to side , the movement can extend to the surface and we get those cool pictures of offset roads and fences like in the 1906 San Francisco EQ or in the Landers EQ. A thrust fault is where the movement is up-down motion and scarfing occurs at the surface where one side of the ground rises or falls. If its a blind thrust fault the fault itself is deep undergound with a large mass of resistant rock on top, when it moves that fault movement is restricted to only the area around the epicenter, the resistant rock mass prevent further fracturing. These last two are far the worst Northridge and Kobe in Japan were on blind thrust fault, there was no surface movement but the verticle motion was devistating, there is NO economical way to design a large building for verticle movement, your talking about designing for the entire weight of the building to be trhown verticaly into the air and then thrown back down against the ground the repeated. It was simple gravity that finally destoryed the WTC, when the weight of the upper floors collapsed onto the lower floors, the forces were so overwhelmingly great as to pancake one floor onto the next then so on and so on till it stopped at the ground, the forces are so great, . Similar forces are at work in trust fault EQs, so most of our codes are for side to side movement.

[Tulyar15]

QUOTE: Originally posted by vsmith

They do this in the Chunnel under the English channel, the downside is that it can take a while to load and unload the train. That would likely eliminate any time gain advantages to drive on/off . In the Chunnel the car-train is basicly a ferry on wheels.

In my experiences of taking my car on the Chunnel Shuttle it doesn't take too long to load and unload the shuttle trains; its certainly quicker than the ferries which is why the Chunnel has the lions share of the truck market; a lot of people not in a hurry still use the ferries.

As for earthquake protection, I believe the tunnels on the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) are designed to withstand earthquakes though I'm not sure how.

With regard to fire precautions the Swiss have been running car and truck shuttle trains under the Alps for many years. So naturally Eurotunnel asked them to review their safery precautions. The Swiss were so impressed with Eurotunnel's safety precautions that they revised theirs as a result.

[Anonymous]

Politicians want to reduce traffic congestion but they're incapable or unwilling to do anything about the popular wisdom that says we're obliged to provide infrastructure for every auto the manufacturers can sell. They should require developers to include the necessary alternative transportation service before getting approval for any new projects.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tomtrain

Is there any way railroads in some form could address this situation?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051112/ap_on_sc/tangled_commute

No.

The reason people use their vehicles to get to and from work is that, even with the road congestion, it is still quicker door to door to drive yourself than it is to drive to a rail station, ride the light rail or whatever, then hitch a taxi from the city station to your place of work. Time is money, and there are no solutions involving rail that could address this situation. I would guess that the highway tunnel overall would be less costly and more time productive than a new rail transit system.

[FThunder11]

Like is says, "would you want to be in that tunnel" I wouldnt especially if there was an earthquake it could collapse on you and then ur dead....i dont thinks its a very doog idea!

[vsmith]

They do this in the Chunnel under the English channel, the downside is that it can take a while to load and unload the train. That would likely eliminate any time gain advantages to drive on/off . In the Chunnel the car-train is basicly a ferry on wheels. A better use of money would be a rail tunnel under the mountains connecting to a wider lightrail system. Something has GOT to done to get OC residents off the freeways, I dont even bother to go down that way simply due to the awfull traffic, I don't know if your an OC resident but have you tried driving thru South OC on the 5 or 405 on a weekend lately?

[Anonymous]

What about drive-on, drive-off trains?

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by zardoz

Six miles in 90 minutes! I can't even imagine what that must be like, going an average of 4mph for that long. People should get a ride to the freeway, get dropped off, and just walk. How frustrating would that be for drivers to watch people WALK past their car on the freeway!! Or take a bike. Of course, one would have to be doing that exercise amongst all those fumes of the idling chrome mountains.

Just imagine the fun in an 11-mile long tunnel when some dipweed on his/her cell phone rear-ends someone because they were too busy talking and forgot to take off their sunglasses, and causes a major pile-up. Just think of the fumes, the claustrophobia; and it would be even better during a quake when the power goes out and all 11 miles are in total blackness. Let the good times roll!

Sounds fun ! [:D][:D]

[vsmith]

Zardoz

It can take 90 mins to go the 10 miles from Santa Monica to Pasadena, yet all the transit projects currently underway are EAST of downtown, and not west to Santa Monica, this is due to idiot NIMBYs on the west side.

[zardoz]

Six miles in 90 minutes! I can't even imagine what that must be like, going an average of 4mph for that long. People should get a ride to the freeway, get dropped off, and just walk. How frustrating would that be for drivers to watch people WALK past their car on the freeway!! Or take a bike. Of course, one would have to be doing that exercise amongst all those fumes of the idling chrome mountains.

Just imagine the fun in an 11-mile long tunnel when some dipweed on his/her cell phone rear-ends someone because they were too busy talking and forgot to take off their sunglasses, and causes a major pile-up. Just think of the fumes, the claustrophobia; and it would be even better during a quake when the power goes out and all 11 miles are in total blackness. Let the good times roll!

[vsmith]

Yeah I read that, Given the horrible traffic to get from Norco to Orange on the 91 I'm not surprised by this but I doubt it will happen. Its very long for one thing and its very very difficult to built thru an active fault zone, you almost have to plan for where the tunnel will fracture and move, like a control joint in a concrete slab or build in a cushion, a "crush" zone aroung it. The tunnels mentioned in Norway and the Chunnel do not have to deal with seismic zones. Japan has built many tunnels thru active seismic and volcanic zones though I cannot say for certain how they deal with potential movement and fracturing.

I doubt this will come to anything, there has been talk of completing the 710 freeway which was blocked by a small city that has successfully blocked Cal-trans from effectivley whiping there city off the map, and completing it with a tunnel UNDER the city, this could be done, there are no major faults to deal with, its thru soil more than rock, and is only 3-4 miles long. But the $2B estimate has caused alot of fiscal types in the politically moderate surrounding cities to cry to high heaven! If $2B is causing this much fuss, when voters in more conservative OC get the $9B bill i think it will die a fast death in the voting booth! The sad thing is that $9B could build a very effective commuter rail service for the northern part of OC but as we out here now, any attempt at large scale mass transit in OC gets voted down. You have to pry their cold dead fingers off their cars steering wheels before they'll give up driving! Even if its a 2mph in gridlock. Which is what will have to happen before any consideration for light rail or commuter rail would be given serious consideration. Even if by some fiscal miracle they DID build this, it would be jammed the day after it opened.

[Anonymous]

Is there any way railroads in some form could address this situation?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051112/ap_on_sc/tangled_commute