Quote:
Originally Posted by DizzyEdge
If only the tracks had been trenched they would have been a non-issue. Not sure if that' feasible after the fact.
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Always with the tracks (not just you; this is a general discussion problem). Assuming that the railroad is to keep continuous operation, what does this tunnel look like? If we don't want the nightmare to end all traffic nightmares and cut downtown off from all access to the south for a period of years, then the tunnel has to be underneath the existing underpasses. The underpasses have 4 metres of clearance below the existing rail, plus there is presumably some sort of structure that would need to be built to hold them up with a rail tunnel underneath, so the roof of the rail tunnel would need to be 6 metres below grade. CPR wants, IIRC, 7 metres of clearance above the rail, plus let's allow a little clearance for fans and what not, so we need the top of the rail to be say 8 metres below the roof of the tunnel; that is, 14 metres below grade. This is a minimum, and assumes that any utilities under the road (and there are manholes in the underpass) have already been relocated; otherwise you would need to go more than 14m deep.
I'm sure that the CPR would adamantly oppose the addition of any grades to it's line, because trains and slopes don't really play well together. But let's assume a grade of 1% is the maximum we can use. (2.2% is the grade through the spiral tunnels by Field, and they use extra locomotives for that). So a 14 m deep tunnel needs a 1400m approach.
The problem is that 4th St E is 670m from the Elbow River, and you can't cross the Elbow with only half of a tunnel. So you actually need to start 1400 m east of the Elbow crossing. By the time you're 1400 m from the Elbow, you're around Blackfoot Trail in the middle of the rail yards. But wait! 750m from the Elbow, there are two big wyes as the lines north to Edmonton and south that eventually run parallel with the LRT join up. So now we're not only rebuilding the entire rail yard in Inglewood (and how does that even work?), we're also building either a crazy funky rail-rail-rail interchange in the process to connect to the N and the S, or we're building another 3 km of tunnels so that the N and S connections are at the appropriate height once they reach the rail crossing level. Oh, and by the way, 12th St SE is closed during this entire project.
Ignoring the fact that we can't make CP do any of this if they don't want to, that it will destroy their rail yards and disrupt their business for years even with the maximum possible mitigation, we're still talking about 12+ km of rail tunnel, with all the ventilation problems associated with taking diesel engines through it. It would probably be more cost effective to spend $40 billion just straight up buying CP than to build and operate this sort of megatunnel.
The most realistic solution is honestly to wait for teleportation or zeppelins or something to make freight rail obsolete.
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