Preface

This Road Tunnels Manual, in electronic version, is a major achievement of the technical committee C.4 Road Tunnel Operations, during the operating cycle 2008-2011, under the decisive leadership of its president Pierre Schmitz (Belgium).

This work makes it possible to make available in readily accessible form the knowledge and recommendations hitherto published, by the World Road Association, in the form of separate reports. The organization in the form of Web pages facilitates the access to information and will also in the future make it possible to more easily update the contents in accordance with the progress of knowledge.

The version put on line at the time of XXIV World Road Congress in Mexico City, in September 2011, is a first version of this Manual. Initially, the contents of the old reports will remain accessible by the means of links towards the PDF files from these documents. Later on, when the contents of these reports are updated, the text will be recast in the form of Web pages to improve reader convenience.

In order to give a broad audience to this Manual, which is without equivalent in its field, the electronic version is produced and will be maintained, by the technical committee in the two official languages of the Association: English and French. Nevertheless some countries have expressed an interest to have a version of the Manual in their own language; thus versions are under development in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Czech on the initiative of various organizations and with the assistance of the technical committee. We make a point of encouraging such initiatives which must be expressed to the Secretary General of the World Road Association, who will guide the proposals.

We hope that this Manual will be an indisputable reference in the whole world, and that it translates, in an objective way, the best practices and knowledge at the moment. For that we need your remarks and suggestions in order to improve and to update this Manual.

Good reading and thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions.

Jean-François Corté

Secretary General
World Road Association

August 2011