the road tunnels manual

• Origins and objectives of the Manual
• Contents of the Manual
• Contributors
• Future evolutions and thanks

Origins and objectives of the Manual

Road tunnels are increasingly used to cross natural barriers such as mountain ranges, rivers, straits or bays. They also constitute a solution, sometimes the only one, to the environmental and spatial constraints of the urban environment, where in the future three-quarters of the global population will live. Under these conditions, the construction and the maintenance of a tunnel are always a challenge and their realisation requires the use of techniques and tools that are increasingly sophisticated and complex.

The need for bringing together the experiences gained in the field of the tunnel operations goes back several decades already. This is why, in 1957, PIARC created the "Road Tunnel Committee" to address the range of aspects concerned in the use of road tunnels, such as geometry, equipment and its maintenance, operation, safety and environment. Since then, supervised by successive presidents and with the help of the secretaries (see list below), this committee has produced technical recommendations across all of these various fields.

These recommendations are substantially followed worldwide and they are even often used as the basis for contractual specifications in many countries. In 1974, ITA (International Tunnel and Underground Space Association) was created to address aspects of the construction of all types of underground works, including road tunnels. In 2005, a Memorandum of Understanding was concluded between these two international associations to ensure that their actions are and will remain complementary and not overlapping.

Since its creation, the "Road Tunnel Committee", which was renamed the "Technical Committee for Road Tunnel Operations" in 1996, has taken part in 14 World Road Congresses. For the first 5 of them, from 1959 to 1975, it published several hundreds of pages of documentary materials. From 1971 (the Prague Congress) onwards, the committee released an up-to-date summary report that listed recommendations on all of the topics examined during each cycle. Since the Kuala Lumpur Congress in 1999, these summary reports were replaced by introductory assessments for each Congress session organised by the committee. In 1995, the committee started to issue PIARC reports outside of the Congresses. The first of them was the special report "The first Road Tunnel" authored by Sir Alan Muir Wood under the aegis of the committee and published in 1995 with the intention of reaching tunnel designers in countries facing the prospect of introducing tunnels in their road networks. Since then, 32 other reports have been published or are in preparation. All these Reports are available free of charge on the PIARC Website.

In addition to these outputs of the committee, many articles have been published in Routes/Roads, notably the October 2004 special issue 324 written in collaboration with ITA and entirely devoted to fire safety in tunnels.

The tunnel committee was also involved in the ERS2 research project, undertaken jointly from 1997 to 2001 by OECD and PIARC, on dangerous goods transport through road tunnels. A Quantitative Risk Assessment Model (QRA Model) was developed within the framework of the ERS2 project.

During the preparation of the centenary Congress in Paris in September 2007, the members of the committee discussed the interest there would be in gathering, synthesising and if necessary updating the large quantity of information disseminated in these various reports and articles. During the Paris Congress, it was decided that this idea would be proposed at the PIARC executive committee for the next cycle of the Road Tunnel Operations committee. This proposal was adopted and the committee was requested, within the 2008-2011 cycle, to produce an electronic encyclopaedia, which would be hosted on the PIARC Website.

Contents of the Manual

This electronic encyclopaedia, called the "PIARC Road Tunnel Manual", primarily takes the contents of the 35 reports issued by the committee between 1995 and 2011, the twenty or so most recent articles published in Routes/Roads in the field of tunnels plus the documents of the joint OECD/PIARC research project. It also links to several useful sites.

Just like the PIARC Road Tunnel Operations Committee, this Manual exclusively concerns the operational aspects of these works (geometry, equipment and its maintenance, operation, safety, environment). It does not consider the civil engineering aspects of tunnels (geology, geotechnics, structures, coatings, waterproofing, drainage, etc), except with regard to their effects on the operation and maintenance of the road tunnels

The Manual comprises two principal parts.

The first part considers general aspects of road tunnels. Chapter Strategic issues presents the principal strategic elements of which any decision maker must take into account before making a decision concerning the choice or the design of a tunnel. This chapter is addressed particularly to the decision makers and to the designers of countries that are starting to tackle the construction or major refurbishment of a tunnel. Chapter Safety deals with the crucial topic of safety in tunnels. In particular, it considers methods for risk analysis. Chapter Human factors regarding tunnel safety considers the human aspects that affect the operation of road tunnels. The severe fires in 1999 and 2000 confirmed how important it is to take human behaviour into account at the design stage. Chapter Operation and maintenance examines the management and the maintenance of tunnels for which, in addition to safety, durability is a key concern. Chapter Environmental issues linked with operation deals with the environmental aspects of road tunnel operations, not only in terms of air pollution but also noise and water pollution.

The second part of the Manual addresses particular elements of tunnels taking operational and safety requirements into consideration. Chapter Geometry addresses the geometrical characteristics of the tunnels and their influence on operation and safety. Chapter Structural facilities related to operation and safety deals with the structural facilities that support operations and safety and must be taken into account at the early stages in a tunnel project, and whose impacts should not be underestimated, particularly on costs. Chapter Equipment and systems reviews the different types of tunnel equipment and gives recommendations covering the whole of their lifecycle. Lastly, Chapter Tunnel response to fire addresses the performance of materials, structures and equipment in fire.

The Manual ends with a Glossary showing the contents of the PIARC Tunnels Dictionary.

This Manual was designed to be a "live" document in order to be able to follow the frequent technological developments that are adopted from the design to the operation of the tunnels, and to be able to easily integrate the new reports that will be produced by the committee during following cycles. In this first version (2008-2011), the committee members have primarily endeavoured to define the structure of the Manual and to integrate into it, by means of new text or hyperlinks, the most relevant documents that already exist. Later, the old texts will be up-dated and up-graded as necessary and on this occasion the integration of their content within the Manual will be examined when appropriate.

Contributors

The preparation of the first version of this Manual was coordinated by Working Group 5 of the C4 committee (2008-2011) in which:

• Pierre Schmitz (Belgium), president of the committee, assumed the coordination of the working group, carried out the electronic page-setting of the Manual, wrote the introduction and the home page, supervised the Glossary;
• Bernard Falconnat (France) wrote chapter 1;
• Didier Lacroix (France), former president of the committee, reviewed all the French texts, checked their accordance with the English texts and supervised the writing of chapter 2;
• Willy De Lathauwer (ITA-Belgium), former French-speaking secretary of the committee, supervised the writing of chapters 3 and 6;
• Roberto Arditi (Italy) supervised the writing of chapters 4 and 5;
• Robin Hall (UK), English-speaking secretary of the committee, reviewed all the English texts and supervised the writing of chapters 7 and 9;
• Antonio Valente (Italy) supervised the writing of chapter 8;
• Rafael López Guarga (Spain) managed and supervised the translation of the encyclopaedia pages in Spanish.

Future evolutions and thanks

In order to help the committee to improve this Manual, all your comments and suggestions are welcome. You can forward them just by clicking on "Contact" at the top of a page of the Manual.

We want to thank all those who have contributed to the realisation of this Manual and in particular all members of the preceding tunnel committees which wrote the reports on which this Manual is based and whose names appear at the beginning of those reports. The contributors of the committee and its working groups to the writing of the various chapters of the Manual appear in bottom of the introductory page of each one of these chapters.

We hope that this Manual will constitute a useful and convivial reference work for all those who are concerned with road tunnels. We hope that this Manual can meet their needs and, with the comments and suggestions of its readers, that following tunnel committees can improve this Manual so that it becomes for all a valuable tool which helps to support the effective and safe transport of goods and people in road tunnels thanks to the contributions of all the PIARC committees members who will have contributed to it.

Pierre SCHMITZ

President of Technical Committee C4 Road Tunnel Operations (2008-2011)
Ministry of the Region Brussels Capital - Brussels Mobility
Brussels (Belgium)

September 2011