Talking about road tunnel operation can go no more than a few sentences without mention of the Mont Blanc Tunnel fire in 1999. A mere mention is all that is needed. Few people in the underground construction industry don’t know the harrowing details of the 39-death tunnel tragedy in the Alps.
Safety of tunnel users and tunnel employees is first and foremost in the minds of road tunnel operators. Tunnels has covered this numerous times, particularly in regards to fi re, most recently in the June 2012 issue.
There are other issues that the operation ‘industry’ faces – while less grave, they still bring challenge to the safety and efficiency of road tunnels and should be addressed nonetheless. Working toward this, the UK’s Road Tunnel Operator Association (RTOA) has recently introduced a Diploma in Road Tunnel Operations.
RTOA was formed in October 2006, marking the first time a single body gave a collective voice to the owners and operators of road tunnels (39 in the UK and Ireland) that handle millions of vehicles every year.
Qualification
Andy Evens, current chairman of RTOA, compares a road tunnel to any public building. "For safety in a public building we need lighting, ventilation, fire fighting equipment, emergency and evacuation lighting, emergency exits, and procedures. In a road tunnel we need all of these same systems working to create a safe user environment.
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By GlobalDataI refer to them as ‘life safety engineering systems’ (LSES). It nicely sums up what these systems do for us.
"The issue facing all tunnel operators is how to achieve and maintain a safe route for the travelling public. The methods we use to achieve ‘safe routes’ invariably involves the provision and intelligent operation of various tunnel LSES. Tragic experience at the Mont Blanc, Tauern and St Gotthard tunnels have shown how quickly tunnel incidents can grow, and emphasised the vital importance of the tunnel operator in immediately addressing such incidents. The fact that it’s only necessary to operate many of the LSES when there is a tunnel incident only adds to the challenge of tunnel operation."
RTOA, working with a company called Pro-Qual, submitted its new level 3 (NVO Type) Diploma in Road Tunnel Operation to QCF this autumn for national approval, expected as Tunnels went to press. The new diploma creates a common qualification framework.
Previous RTOA chairman Peter Bishop explains, "most operators have conducted some form of specific training for those who manage their tunnels from control rooms, but currently there is no nationally-recognised and accredited qualification, nor common standard, to cover the assessment of competency for these operators."
Once approved, the diploma allows operators to choose from 20 available units a selection that best suit their modus operandum, for a total of 37-42 credits (credits per unit vary). Some of the units are transfers from an existing qualification for highway agency type traffic officers called the Diploma in Traffic Management.
"The RTOA’s role will be similar to that of other professional institutions in that it will assess the qualifications, experience and competency of those who will mentor and become assessors of students as they undertake the qualification through their employers," says Bishop.
With the new qualification, highway and tunnel owners and operators will be able to prove, under law, the competency of their staff in key controlling positions.
He points out that it is something that has been a challenge since Mont Blanc where control room operators and management on the Italian side of the tunnel were imprisoned after failing to prove they had trained their personnel properly nor acted with due care and in accordance with procedures during the disaster.
"While this diploma is essentially intended as a UK- and Ireland-based qualification it is already attracting interest from elsewhere in Europe," he says. "Here in the UK my employers Merseytravel, who own and operate the Queensway and Kingsway Tunnels, plan to be the first to roll out the diploma to staff and police operating the two tunnels day to day."
Regulation
Looking to the US, two large road tunnel projects are underway, the Miami Access Tunnel, in Miami, and the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel, in Seattle. Work out in California on the Devil’s Slide tunnel has mostly completed. Larger road tunnels are more commonly found in the more densely populated eastern states, particularly New York and New Jersey. However there is no database, official list or collective information from each state’s Department of Transportation, of the number of road tunnels in the US.
In the UK, Bishop explains, the Road Tunnel Safety Regulations 2007 and 2009 (Statutory Instruments 2007 No 1520) "have made a significant difference to any UK tunnel designated as a Trans European Road Network (TERN) tunnel and places duties upon an operator to appoint an ‘administrative authority’, plus designated posts of ‘tunnel manager’ and ‘tunnel safety officer.’"
He adds that tunnels such the ones owned by Merseytravel, "are not currently TERN tunnels however we aim to comply where we can as a matter of best practice."
The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel (DWT) is the only international vehicular subaqueous tunnel in the world. President and CEO Neal Belitsky says there really aren’t any regulations set at the federal level for the tunnel crossing. With the unique situation of the DWT, the tunnel must comply with Canadian safety and security regulations, however, he says they are not onerous. "They would be best practice within the industry."
Speaking with Neil Gray, the director of government affairs for the International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association (IBTTA), he says the disconnect, or the lack of organisation and standards across the US can be attributed to several reasons. First of all is that in the US there is no entity that is responsible for tunnels. Most of the tunnels under construction worldwide, but also in the US, aren’t for automotive use, he points out.
In addition, the operators of road tunnels are not the people who’ve designed or built them. "Our folks operate tunnels, but they don’t actually build tunnels. I’ve been in ITTBA for almost 20 years now. We will get inquiries such as ‘how do you build a tunnel’ […] My folks are somewhat tangential to it, in a sense. You have the tube itself and then the operational function is a subset. Within the tolling side, and by extension the highway side, or the surface transportation side, if you will, you’ve got rails tunnels, bus and or passenger vehicles, and they all have common elements. And so the operational activities of a roadway in a tunnel space has its nuances."
The diffusion between design/build and operation, in his perspective, is usually only addressed when something bad happens — a fire, or the anchoring problems in Boston’s I-90 connector tunnel, for example. "I’ll be kind of curious about the flooding in New York, if anything will arise out of that." (Referring to the Hurricane in October 2012 that flooded tunnels in New York City).
Training
When asked about the usefulness of developing a qualification or training program for road tunnels in the US that would share a common or natural framework, Belitsky doesn’t see the value. "A tunnel isn’t any tunnel," he says.
There are significant differences in ventilation, size, height of traffic, volume of traffic and the control systems, to name a few. "It would be challenging to look at things as a whole."
However, he explains, many of the underwater tunnels in the US, in cities like Detroit, Boston and New York, are designed by the same engineering groups. "Most are very similar and to be honest, if we have a question, I just call those guys up, and they call me up."
Staff should be trained to respond to everything whether the incident is security issue, natural disaster or manmade disaster.
"Whenever there is a disaster, it becomes an opportunity to review what you do and to better prepare for all different types of occurrences that are out there. We call it the all hazards approach."
Speaking specifically to operator training at DWT, Belitsky notes, "the interesting thing is we used to employ quite a number of people in the skilled trades, and that number is going down as we hire more people with information technology and computer backgrounds. More and more systems and equipment are computer or SCADA-controlled.
"We hire people who have had experience in similar work environments and then all of our operators go through an extensive training program and are mentored and have to prove their worth with actual practical written exams before they allowed to work alone."
Finances
No matter the country of origin, tunnel operators are also dealing with an ever-tightening budget for renewal, repair and refurbishment work done to more demanding standards. "Tunnel managers are expected to deliver more for less and demonstrate transparency within their procurement processes to satisfy a demanding audit trail," Bishop says.
"This must all be delivered within a myriad of UK and European legislation designed to ensure the safety of both tunnel customers and employees, but increasingly operators have realised they need to be able to prove and audit their safety processes and in particular the training of staff, hence the need for a new qualification."
And in the US, Gray points out, beyond the expensive price tags, any work on road tunnels such as the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which flooded in October 2012 due to the storm surge of Hurricane Sandy, cause major disruption to the users and cities are unable to displace the traffic.
When these critical links do need to be taken out of service, it will be catastrophic, he says
