Page 5 - TunnelTalk Annual Review 2015

Global connections
Expanding land-based transportation networks across the globe is driving the most marked increase in the demand for underground and tunnel engineering in history. Record sized mega-TBM drives, outstanding drill+blast excavations, and immersed tubes of extraordinary dimension are creating links between nations, across continents and under dividing
straits at this beginning of a new era of global road and railway expansion.
Transport Ministers of seven European Member States and all 10 European Coordinators or representatives of major cross-boarder corridor projects in Europe attended a two-day congress in Innsbruck in March 2015 to discuss the international mega projects planned to improve inter- connectivity across the continent.
“One of the most important fundaments for securing a unified Europe is the investment in a modern high- performance infrastructure for land- based transportation,” said Prof Konrad Bergmeister, CEO of the Brenner Base Tunnel project developer, BBT SE, and organizer of the Innsbruck conference, in cooperation with the European Commission. The trans-European Network for Transport, known as TEN-T, is a basic plan for addressing the most important bottlenecks and cross-border projects.
Nine corridors are set to improve east- west and north-south connections for movement of both freight and passengers. The cost of developing the TEN-T Core Network requires an estimated €500 billion, with €250 billion to be spent on removing the main bottlenecks up to 2020. These nine Core Network Corridors
Europe united
Dipl.-Ing. Roland Herr, reporting for TunnelTalk
comprise significant underground and tunnelling works.
1. Baltic-Adriatic Corridor
This 2,400km long corridor will provide better access to Baltic and Adriatic seaports for the economic centres in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. The main missing links are the cross-border sections and the Semmering and Koralm railway tunnels in Austria for the Alpine crossing. Construction on both Austrian projects started in April 2012 and April 2011 respectively.
2. North Sea-Baltic Corridor
Cross-border operational systems for road and railway need to be modernized and
developed between Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. The proposed strait crossing fixed-link tunnel between Helsinki and Tallinn is part of this corridor.
3. Mediterranean Corridor
One of the well-known missing links on this 3,000km connection for high-speed trains from the western Mediterranean region to the Ukrainian border with Hungary and following the coastlines of Spain and France, crossing the Alps to the east through Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, is the new cross-border Lyon-Turin high speed rail project between France and Italy which runs 57km in twin tube tunnels.
Core network corridors for advanced land-based connectivity across the European continent
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GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
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