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Government investigates 4km tunnel under Wellington (www.rnz.co.nz)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This would be amazing for anyone heading out to the bays or Wellington Airport, no intersections or lights to worry about, and it would make life so much easier for the CBD as well, not having so much through traffic in the CBD.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I mean, we've got no shortage of tunnels in Wellington, many of which have been around for over a hundred years, and withstood many earthquakes already. Building a quake resilient tunnel can definitely be done.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

So there's 3 tunnels that we run vehicles through, day to day (that im aware of). Terrace tunnel, mt Vic and the bus tunnel. The city would struggle with either of them collapsing, and I understand the ones under mt Vic are already in dire straits, going by some of the points hopeful mayors that they were campaigning on. I'm no expert but your claim feels like a huge stretch.

As for earthquakes, there's one that was readily found via a search in 1855 and that "considerably reshaped the geography", so, respectfully, I completely disagree. https://www.wcl.govt.nz/heritage/earthquakes.html

edit sorry, I should have clarified earlier, it's the major quakes I'm concerned about. Not the frequent little ones

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You're forgetting Karori, and that's just vehicle tunnels. There's also the many train tunnels around Wellington.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I realised there's the cable car too, although that's a funny great area.

Certainly the prospect of building a tunnel under the guts of the city for several km (where it's likely to cross a fault line) is edging towards this kind of nightmare: https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/files/2011/03/10_10-Canterbury-22.jpg

I can't see how a tunnel would sustain that, which seems like a death knell for the whole idea...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

It's certainly been done, it's not an insurmountable obstacle.