Worlds longest tunnel

There is a massive amount of M & E in the Tideway though, interceptors, pumping stations etc. Some very complex tunnelling and deep shafts in difficult ground adjacent to and under the river.

Yup, can confirm :p (off the top of my head tho the figure is under 20%. The cost is mainly heavy civils)
 
its chronically neglected because of NIMBY though, anything we set our sights on is dragged through the courts for decades.

we really need more laws restricting what you can legally complain about and/or a maximum time line and less appeals.

You need a government with the guts to flex its compulsory acquisition muscles.
 
Great tunnel project. I love it.

To the people comparing it to HS2: I laugh at the people slating HS2. Once you begin to understand what's involved, you'll soon realise what we're planning to do is huge.
 
Great tunnel project. I love it.

To the people comparing it to HS2: I laugh at the people slating HS2. Once you begin to understand what's involved, you'll soon realise what we're planning to do is huge.

The day will come when all civil construction is synthetically put together, 24/7 construction...
 
The day will come when all civil construction is synthetically put together, 24/7 construction...

Yeah - right after we all have driverless cars sitting on our drive lol. Just think, if we weren't ploughing so much money after this huge white elephant, we could actually afford to invest in some decent infrastructure.
 
Perhaps you could tell us why Crossrail two is projected to cost £32Bn? Sure, its twice the length of the Gotthard Base, but it's not as deep and costs considerably more than double.

I can't because it is a different company. It may have the same sponsor, but it is completely different. Whislt we are sharing some of our lessons learned I don't have much exposure to CRL2 any more than you or anyone else!

However, on average it costs something like £150k per meter for a tunnel. So you have considerably more tunnelling. Also, from the map, it looks like it interfaces with a lot more NR lines than CRL does, so adds a huge amount of complexity to interfaces, connections and signalling. The line uses existing infrastructure, the new lines are only the tunnels through London. So there is a lot more complexity with CRL 2 owing to the fact there are more spurs to other lines run by other operators and NR.

This is just a guess as I don't work for them.
 
I can't because it is a different company. It may have the same sponsor, but it is completely different. Whislt we are sharing some of our lessons learned I don't have much exposure to CRL2 any more than you or anyone else!

However, on average it costs something like £150k per meter for a tunnel. So you have considerably more tunnelling. Also, from the map, it looks like it interfaces with a lot more NR lines than CRL does, so adds a huge amount of complexity to interfaces, connections and signalling. The line uses existing infrastructure, the new lines are only the tunnels through London. So there is a lot more complexity with CRL 2 owing to the fact there are more spurs to other lines run by other operators and NR.

This is just a guess as I don't work for them.

Crossrail 2 has more branches terminating in south London, 4 iirc, and 3 branches in north London. Crossrail 1 has just 2 branches at one side (East), and one main one to Reading in the West.

Crossrail 2 is far more complex and serves more areas than Crossrail 1.
 
Crossrail 2 has more branches terminating in south London, 4 iirc, and 3 branches in north London. Crossrail 1 has just 2 branches at one side (East), and one main one to Reading in the West.

Crossrail 2 is far more complex and serves more areas than Crossrail 1.

Is this like a tl;dr of FF's post? :p
 
I can't because it is a different company. It may have the same sponsor, but it is completely different. Whislt we are sharing some of our lessons learned I don't have much exposure to CRL2 any more than you or anyone else!

However, on average it costs something like £150k per meter for a tunnel. So you have considerably more tunnelling. Also, from the map, it looks like it interfaces with a lot more NR lines than CRL does, so adds a huge amount of complexity to interfaces, connections and signalling. The line uses existing infrastructure, the new lines are only the tunnels through London. So there is a lot more complexity with CRL 2 owing to the fact there are more spurs to other lines run by other operators and NR.

This is just a guess as I don't work for them.

Mind if I ask what your involvement is and who you work for? Purely out of curiosity, my girlfriend is currently working on Crossrail (Costain JV), worked for Vinci previously, also on CR. Understand if you don't want to share that info though.
 
I'm not sure that this is the case actually, I can't back this up at present but I seem to recall reading that the UK is used by a lot of other countries as a "via".

This could have been pub chat or the like though.

Probably pub chat. The UK isn't a major hub for sea freight - most of that is transhipped on the continent in the likes of Rotterdam. What sea freight is transhipped in the UK doesn't go on roads - normally straight onto other ships.

Same for airfreight.
 
Genuinely interested, can anyone tell me why HS2 is a good thing, and justifies it's cost (which will spiral out of control, as with any UK project)?

35 miles??? Meh

Traffic it will cut down on, and the distance it has cut out by going through, rather than round, must be impressive?
 
Genuinely interested, can anyone tell me why HS2 is a good thing, and justifies it's cost (which will spiral out of control, as with any UK project)?



Traffic it will cut down on, and the distance it has cut out by going through, rather than round, must be impressive?

For a start it gives some level of redundancy to the rail network in the area.
It'll more than double the effective capacity for the rail network on that section from memory.
It's what we should have been doing for the last 50 years all over the place.

Moving the Highspeed long distance traffic to HS2 means that you can run far more of the fast trains (so more capacity at the higher speeds) on that line, and at the same time run far more slower short distance trains, and frieght trains on the old line.

Ideally the whole rail network would have 2+ lines in each direction, one for the slower and local traffic, and one for the longer distance higher speed traffic, as at the moment the system is a bit of a bodge (due to the nature of how and when it's been built*) that has almost no redundancy for some areas and to run a high speed train requires fitting it around the slower trains so you're juggling the requirement to get passengers from Stop 1 to 2, to 3, to 4, whilst also the need to get passengers (and goods) from Stop 1 to stop 20 in a reasonable time.

*Not a complaint about the engineering, but recognition that the network has been built and updated in sections for it's entire life, with improvements retrofitted where possible (but in some cases it's not been feasible so the trains have to be built to take that into account).
 
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