Cut and cover tunnel under a Motorway - 3 days.

[Trevatanus]

Very impressive.
Just wonder how long it would take in this country?
I am guessing that we would measure the work in months rather than days?

https://www.facebook.com/JaysonLuberTrafficGuy/vid...

[Boydie88]

Damn.

I'd suggest years if the Coventry A46 bypass clusterfk is anything to go by.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Coventry,+West...

[Otispunkmeyer]

More complicated but the new junction they are doing at J19 on the M1 has literally taken years. They were starting to do it when I worked down that way in 2010-11 I think. 5 Years on and it still looks like a building site with no end in sight.

[legless]

Otispunkmeyer said:

More complicated but the new junction they are doing at J19 on the M1 has literally taken years. They were starting to do it when I worked down that way in 2010-11 I think. 5 Years on and it still looks like a building site with no end in sight.

I drive through there daily.

There were the works 2011-12 to replace the M6-M1 sliproad bridge, which finished early 2012.

This was followed by the junction rebuild, which started in early 2014 and will finish within the next few months. There doesn't seem to be much more to do now - the only remaining piece seems to be the new M1N - M6 link, which will mean that the new A14-M6 link can come out of contraflow.

To be fair to them, I've easily driven through the junction well over 1,000 times since the works started, and aside from a 50mph speed limit it's not once caused me any delay or holdup, which I more than can be said for the A45/A46 junction rebuild.

[baldy1926]

I would have thought about 3 years for the initial work.
Then they discover they forgot to include drainage and the concrete would be sub standard.
Then 5 miles of cones would be installed with average speed cameras and hardly any sign of workers.
After another 18 months and a flurry of work it would be complete then closed or reduced to 1 lane for on going maintenance.

[Krikkit]

Boydie88 said:

Damn.

I'd suggest years if the Coventry A46 bypass clusterfk is anything to go by.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Coventry,+West...

Yep, this is an absolute joke! Even after multiple years of work they're no closer.

[Thankyou4calling]

baldy1926 said:

I would have thought about 3 years for the initial work.
Then they discover they forgot to include drainage and the concrete would be sub standard.
Then 5 miles of cones would be installed with average speed cameras and hardly any sign of workers.
After another 18 months and a flurry of work it would be complete then closed or reduced to 1 lane for on going maintenance.

Or they'd find a colony of newts and have to divert the entire road.

[anonymous-user]

Bloomin' heck that's impressive. There sheer level of activity in the time lapse is amazing.
I know I'll probably get slated for it and told because I don't work in the industry I just don't understand, but UK road works appear to be a model of inefficiency, no matter where they are or what the aim is.
Take the M3 "upgrade".....15 miles of speed-restricted traffic yet rarely there are more than a couple of dozen blokes on site, and at risk of trotting out a tired cliche, no one ever seems to be actually working, no one is ever really going at it hammer and tongs to get anything done. It just seems to be a lot of standing around or sleeping in the cab of a JCB.
And before anyone says they do it all at night, I've travelled through at literally all hours and it's the same between midnight and 6am...the place is deserted. And forget weekends.
The UK road building industry appears to be very idle and at the same complacent about the impact it causes.

Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 8th June 14:21

[Dromedary66]

It is extremely impressive. It took over a year of evening and weekend closures for the Fore Street tunnel on the A406 to just have some new concrete plinths and drainage installed.

[P-Jay]

It's taken a gang of road builders a week to spray the road near by office with 'tar' and sweep new chippings over it, so I've thinking "a while".

And no one can blame 'elf and safety, or 'Euro nutters' for this one - the Dutch are regulated in the same way as us. I guess the difference is down to budget - there were a LOT of people and machinery all very busy on that video and some fancy tunnel moving equipment being used, here we'd have 6 guys and a pick-axe.

[anonymous-user]

P-Jay said:

I guess the difference is down to budget - there were a LOT of people and machinery all very busy on that video and some fancy tunnel moving equipment being used, here we'd have 6 guys and a pick-axe.

That's the bit I don't get....it's all man-hours at the end of the day. Granted there will be a few exceptions where a one-off very special Thunderbirds digger type thingy has to work alone, but how is employing ten blokes over four weeks any more cost effective than employing 40 of them for one week?
As well as being a bit idle and somewhat complacent I'm pretty certain the road building industry is hugely rigged and ever so slightly corrupt.

[LeoZwalf]

Road tax in NL is very high so there's the cash to invest in the roads, resulting in high quality road infrastructure and amazing projects like in the OP.

UK, Belgium, Italy - for example - all competitively low road tax. st roads.

[shakotan]

LeoZwalf said:

Road tax in NL is very high so there's the cash to invest in the roads, resulting in high quality road infrastructure and amazing projects like in the OP.

UK, Belgium, Italy - for example - all competitively low road tax. st roads.

Until this year VED went into the big Budget pot anyway, it's only from 2016 onwards that it's claimed all funds from VED will be ringfenced for roads.

[Trevatanus]

shakotan said:

LeoZwalf said:

Road tax in NL is very high so there's the cash to invest in the roads, resulting in high quality road infrastructure and amazing projects like in the OP.

UK, Belgium, Italy - for example - all competitively low road tax. st roads.

Until this year VED went into the big Budget pot anyway, it's only from 2016 onwards that it's claimed all funds from VED will be ringfenced for roads.

Has anyone said if that will mean more actual money spent on roads though?

[havoc]

Krikkit said:

Boydie88 said:

Damn.

I'd suggest years if the Coventry A46 bypass clusterfk is anything to go by.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Coventry,+West...

Yep, this is an absolute joke! Even after multiple years of work they're no closer.

Funnily enough that was the first thing that sprang to my mind...

[Dyl]

Very impressive!

On the contrary to the above comments saying we couldn't do the same in the Uk, I live close to and drive through the M8/M73/M74 upgrades every day. Progress on that seems fairly quick and there are men working on it at all hours of the day, 7 days a week.

[technodup]

The Dutch are apparently well known for building tunnels. I watched the longest one in the world being built in the far east, China iirc and it was a Dutch guy who oversaw the whole thing. They didn't have the expertise.