... it looks like a multi-multi-multi-phase project. Hats off to making this work.
Second, I noticed how long it took to build this tunnel: Koralm Tunnel -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel
It is 33km, and it took from 2008 to 2025 to build it. That is a damn long time! The Toei Oedo line in Tokyo is 40+km and was built in about 10 years. My guess about the wild difference: The geoengineering of the Koralm Tunnel is way more complex, and/or the rock is much harder. Can anyone with experience in this area comment? I would like to learn more. I guess that most of central Tokyo is aluvial plains (Shanghai is similar), so you are basically digging through clay and sand -- easy stuff for modern tunnel boring machines.
Being two separate tunnels, it also needs twice as much excavation work. It's also ~25x deeper than Toei Oedo (4000ft vs 157ft). At 4000ft the rock itself is 45-50C!
> "The undisturbed rock temperature varies from 10 °C, in tunnel sections close to the portals, to 32 °C in the tunnel centre"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088677982...
Assumed they would at least have their own air in the bits that didn't have aircon/ventilation while it was being built. They don't even need to do that anymore! The ventilation systems they used are as advanced and bespoke as the boring machines.
Because they were blasting too, they couldn't utilize full-face pressurization of the entire tunnel to maintain negative pressure to suck all of the fumes, dust, silicates, etc out like they would if it was only boring. That's 1-3kPa, "leaks are jets of air, can pull an airlock door closed hard enough to break bones" territory.
Instead, they have a bunch of dedicated supply and exhaust vents going to the surface (some up to 2m in diameter) and sets of connections between the two tunnels with huge axial fans. It allows them to selectively apply "slight" negative pressure to any of the individual segments when they need to clear them. 50Pa is ~10x what you encounter in a negative pressure highrise. It is described as a "constant slight breeze"
I found this short video on some of the safety features of the finished tunnel. It almost looks "too serious", like something out of a James Bond movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8trt96huf0
Overall an amazing achievement, and unsurprising it took this long to figure out!
> Being two separate tunnels, it also needs twice as much excavation work.
Population size, density, terrain, etc. have nothing to do with it.
Kanto is flat, it's the only region in Japan that could sustain feeding such a massive population and could allow building the first mega city on the planet.
Combine that with the massive engineering and rail experience Japanese have, and it's no surprise imho that combined with favorable geography they could build it quickly.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Topograp...
The Alps are very, very old in comparison.
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000299789/traum-vom-sue...
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...
How is there no unifying design language for these?
https://image-service.web.oebb.at/infra/.imaging/default/dam...
https://image-service.web.oebb.at/infra/.imaging/default/dam...
Also, the EU is the most efficient government in terms of overhead, and having seen some of it up close not wasting time or money on "unifying design languages" for every single funding billboard is very much EU style. Just copy-paste by some local authority in Powerpoint in most cases, I bet.
1: https://hadea.ec.europa.eu/programmes/connecting-europe-faci...
2: https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/3192a0ef-6bda...
3: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/information-sources/log...
That's simply not true, the EU subsidy budget is dwarfed by each country's national budget. From https://eubudget.europarl.europa.eu/en/how-it-works/ :
The EU budget [..] accounts annually for around 1% of the EU's GNI (gross national income), or around €160-180 billion. National public spending by EU countries averages nearly 50% of their respective GNI.
I'm not sure I understand your comment tbh. Where does the money come from, if not from EU taxpayers?
> the EU subsidy budget is dwarfed by each country's national budget.
My comment had nothing to do with that.
The page you linked has a question "How is the budget funded", which lists the revenues:
> Another difference between the EU budget and national budgets is that the EU lacks direct taxation power to finance its budget and instead relies on revenues called “own resources”.
> These revenues are:
> - Custom duties on imports into the EU
> - A small part of the VAT collected by each EU country
> - A contribution based on the amount of non-recycled plastic waste in each EU country
> - National contribution from each EU country based on its gross national income (GNI). All member states contribute according to their share in the combined GNI of EU countries. This is the largest share of the own resources.
I'd say all of that comes from the EU taxpayers.
The idea is to show people the benefits of the EU, essentially. It is unclear how well it works.
Cornwall, say, had reason to feel hard done by; it was the second-poorest NUTS 3 region in Northern Europe. It's just that they were directing their ire at Europe, and not at the national government where it belonged. All but one of the ten poorest NUTS 3 regions in Northern Europe were in the UK pre-Brexit (along with the very richest NUTS 3 region, inner London), and there's a reason for that.
(Of course, the problem is now solved by Brexit; as the UK no longer participates in Eurostat, _none_ of the poorest regions in the Eurostat statistics are in the UK!)
I think this sort of things does little to convince people. The road network was there and working before the EU, it is still there and working now.
Especially, people were well aware that the UK was a consistent net contributor to the EU budget so knew that EU funding for infrastructure was not reallly a benefit.
Yes, the UK government was a net contributor, but the UK government likes to concentrate its spending around London.
EU funding was specifically given out to poorer regions (like Wales) that were long neglected by their national governments.
Devolution itself also means that, effectively, the UK government is in charge of England while the devolved governments are in charge of their respective nations, so just looking at which projects the UK government funds is misleading.
So, it is not accurate to say that regions are neglected, and you might even argue that ultimately the South East of England and England overall fund the whole country...
Overall, I do not know if that was specifically a benefit for Wales. Obviously in the end the Welsh decided that the cons outweighted the pros, anyway.
Also, eyesore? What do you have against the EU flag?
Now I am sure that Austria has benefited from EU membership, but this is not one of the areas.
The funds are less useful if they're in the hands of our government.
Basically yoy bid to get some of your money back...
Which is much better than at the Austrian politics level.
I like the EU flag. I do not like the billboards. They just do not look good. Plant an actual flag there instead? I'd prefer that!
