October was certainly a challenging month for the tunnelling industry, one that looks set to change the nature of road tunnel operations in Europe for good, and for most not a moment too soon. Another horrific Alpine tunnel fire, this time in Switzerland’s St Gotthard tunnel, caused by two trucks colliding head on, has claimed 11 lives.
The tragedy will do nothing to improve the already poor public opinion of underground infrastructure. We all remember the glare of media negativity surrounding the safety of the Mont Blanc and Tauern tunnels following the fires in 1999 that together were responsible for 51 deaths.
But this time there is a distinct and important difference. The safety features of the St Gotthard tunnel have been praised, instead of found wanting as was the case with Mont Blanc. This raises questions about operation rather than design. A parallel escape tunnel connected by evacuation halls and cross passages every 250m seemed perfectly acceptable. But it is only when you see photographs of the tunnel where the traffic lanes are separated by two white lines that hindsight kicks in. How can driver safety possibly be guaranteed in these conditions? A tyre blow-out is thought to be responsible for this most recent accident, something that occurs on roads daily. It now seems reasonable to believe that only luck has separated us from a greater number of these ‘low risk, high consequence’ disasters over the last 30 years.
A glaringly obvious similarity runs between all three fires. They were the result of accidents involving heavy freight vehicles in single-tube, bi-directional tunnels. Now pressure is mounting for the transfer of heavy freight to rail, a notion that the Swiss government has pre-empted with the massive AlpTransit scheme currently under way.
Bi-directional traffic in single bores also looks certain to change. The EC has spoken of measures including the enforcement of unidirectional traffic at all times through single tube tunnels by imposed travel time slots, with a directive proposed to drastically improve road and train tunnel safety across Europe brought in at the beginning of 2002.
Public opinion carries no little substance and with the negative view of tunnels intensifying with each additional incident, there could be a drastic knock-on effect for future infrastructure investment decisions. Operational standards simply have to change to ensure that these increasingly common incidents are eradicated. With the future of the industry looking optimistic it would be criminal to allow a general opinion to propagate that all tunnels are inherently dangerous. As the designers and constructors of new tunnels do you really want to leave it to somebody else to say whether they are safe? Now is a critical time to promote strengths and eliminate weaknesses in an industry that must be seen as necessary option, not a necessary evil.
