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

submitted 7 months ago by Ilovethebomb to c/politics

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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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[–] AWOL_muppet 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's an amazing idea, but the seismic implications are enough to discourage it, I'd have thought.

How the heck does one build it with a straight face when we have so many quakes and have been expecting something major for decades?

[–] Ilovethebomb 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.

[–] AWOL_muppet 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

[–] Ilovethebomb 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.

[–] AWOL_muppet 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...

[–] Ilovethebomb 1 points 7 months ago

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

[–] Seleni@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Earthquakes tend to go around voids, interestingly enough.