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Spain, Morocco To Build Undersea Rail Tunnels
DoraLives writes "The BBC reports that Spain and Morocco 'have agreed to build a 39-kilometre rail tunnel beneath the Mediterranean Sea, to link Europe and Africa.' and that 'This plan could be put into action as early as next year...' Fairly daunting technical piece of work should they attempt it, but the prospect of an all-rail trip from Edinburgh to Tangiers is intriguing to say the least."
Now a tunnel across the Mediteranian is not going to work. First off, Tangiers is not exactly what I would call a "business" destination. Nor is Spain. You have to dig pretty deep on the African continent to find anywhere a typical European traveler would be going. Perhaps I am missing a pent up demand for travel from Africa. It didn't RTFA.
The next problem is travel time. Sure a ride from spain to Morroco would be a lot quicker via Train. A trip from France to Morroco a bit less so. From Scottland to Morrocco... well, only for the folks who want to do it because they can.
Finally I would like to note that the 2 countries involved are still involved in a few territorial spats. That is not a recipe for success on a multi-billion dollar project.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Where did you get that?
I mean I'm no authority on it.. but Morocco is not really one of the "terorrist hotspots" of the muslim world..
The King has been very adamant about keeping muslim fundamentalists out of the country. The chiefly muslim population of Morocco are indeed very muslim, wear traditional garb, etc, but are not fundamentalist weirdos.. they respect others, other religions, and generally don't hate westerners.
Aside from being poor, Morocco was a neat place to visit, and the people were surprisingly well educated about world politics and geography, considering the poverty levels.
By the way, the Pan-American highway has a small gap due to a nature preserve so your rally race would need to board ships. It is called the Darien Gap and is about 50 miles wide so it could also be closed with a tunnel. But I doubt if the economic incentive is there to do that way. More likely the rainforest will be sacrificed.
The ministry said that a joint Spanish and Moroccan committee of officials had already agreed a preliminary three-year plan of works to start as early as next year, with an estimated initial cost of $30m.
Er, "m" in Europe/Africa is 1e6, right? I can't imagine what sort of "preliminary three-year plan of works" in such an Herculean effort could be done for a mere $30 million.
Look at the big dig in Boston -- a relatively easy task (shorter by far, at least) with initial estimates of $4billion (I think) and 40-50% overruns, I can't imagine much more than breaking ground on either end of this proposed gargantuan tunnel getting done for $30m.
everything in moderation
Why is the parent modded up so highly? The distance between Spain and Morocco is only nine miles (14 kilometers) at the narrowest point. The Chunnel between England and France is 31 miles long, 23 of which are underwater. This doesn't seem so impractical.
Oops!
So man redundant links and not a one has a picture of where the tunnel will be located. :(
Can anyone find one? This is the best detail I could find.
(Does anyone else get the impression that almost the only maps available online are all stolen from the CIA World Factbook? Information Superhighway my ass...)
I suspect this is because neither country has a reputation (deserved or not) for incredible timeliness or efficiency.
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The challenge to this lies not in refugees or economics but in engineering.
The deepest tunnel currently is in Japan and is 100m below a 140m channel. Engineering a tunnel 240m down is seriously non-trivial, and Japan is seriously hooked-in when it comes to engineering. Spain and Morocco, really have no hope of pulling this off without outsourcing the whole deal.
The tunnel would need to be 300m + 100m below sea level (1/4 mile). That depth presents numerous difficulties with removing seep water, air density, and a host of other things. The geology is not nearly as receptive to a tunnel as it was for the chunnel engineers and they'll find that it's much, much more difficult cutting through than the chalk that is present beneath the English Channel.
This is easily an order of magnitude more difficult to build than the chunnel was. I'd be surprised if it's ever built.
The EU keeps Turkey out of the EU, in large part because Turkey is a Muslim country...
Actually, it has much more to do with Turkey's incredibly poor record on human rights. A few years ago during the Danish Presidency, the European Council issued a set of requirements called the Coppenhagen Criteria, which basically made up a laundry list of minor atrocities perpetrated/ignored by the Turkish government that would have to be resolved before the country was considered for EU membership.
It's really easy to make blanket statements about the European community's supposed "intolerance" for the Islamic minority, but the criticism is far from water tight. For example, the mentioned "head scarf" policy, which is being discussed in terms of its enforcement in state-run public schools, also forbids the wearing of "obvious" religious symbols like skull caps and large crucifixes.
Many Africans enter Spain legitimately - jumping through all the necessary hoops. This in itself is not problematic. The trouble starts when their work Visas start to expire and they realize that the EU's uber-flimsy border control allows them to leave Spain and bounce around other countries in continental Europe almost indefinitely. The proposed rail link would have little or no impact on this problem because it deals with a different set of borders.
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Churchill
Things are probably different in Europe (never taken a train there personally), but in the USA with our super-ghetto trains, it almost always takes longer to take a train than to drive. For commuting trains, I can take CalTrain from my house to my work. Takes about 20 min longer than driving, since it makes an obscene number of stops along the way. The only reason I'd take it is so I can read the paper while commuting. But a time saver it ain't (especially when you factor in time to get to and from the train stations).
Subways are better. BART's decent, but they'll probably never make it down to the South Bay...
As for "real" trains, all we've got is Amtrak. When I was in school, I thought about taking the train from Santa Barbara back home to San Jose. Thats about a 300 mile drive. Driving typically takes about 4-4.5 hours. The train takes (literally, I just looked it up) EIGHT HOURS and costs $82. I get 30mpg in my car so I can make the drive in about half the time and for half the cost. Hell I could *fly* to LA for about that and be there in 2 hours.
It really sucks, since I'd be totally willing to take trains to work or down to LA if they could ever manage to match a car for cost and speed...
There are some trains that can shift gauge, but most railway engineers think that's asking for trouble.
Another issue is loading gauge (essentially how big the cross section of the train can be and not create problems). The UK has a really tight loading gauge and the Chunnel has a HUGE loading gauge.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
According to the Guardian, the sea is shallower along the proposed longer route than along the shorter route. The depth of the tunnel would go from 300m to 900m if the shorter route were taken.
The tunnel will have to be significantly longer than the span of water it crosses, in order to allow for the tunnel to reach relatively non-permeable rock by the time you're under wet stuff and to allow a relatively shallow grade.
The Chunnel's average depth under the seafloor is 40m, dropping that distance at a 2% grade takes 2km of rundown on each end... and that's not counting the 100m or so of ocean you have to dip under.
Trains really don't do well on steep grades-- inefficient as hell compared to nice shallow glides, although this is less of a problem on pure-electric trains that don't have to worry about keeping their diesel generators running in an efficient RPM-range.
So, the shortest crossing point doesn't necessarily correspond to the shortest required tunnel, depending on the contours of the seafloor/coasts and the various rock formations around.
Gibraltar is also a hell of a lot funkier from an engineering perspective. The English Channel averages only about 100m deep, while the Strait of Gibraltar appears to be significantly more irregular, with bits running to about ~300m deep from what I can find on the net.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
So, if I'm correct, all of the links to the west of this map are either completed or funded...
As most of this is simply land routes, when are we gonna start the Siberia-Alaska route???
I know there's more to be considered...the extreme cold is one...the other major problem is that the area under consideration is geologically active. Not good for a tunnel...the other problem is that a portion of the "best route" is a protected wild life reserve.
The only problem is that this (like free trade zones) will not be good for the US economy...
Amtrak has not once ever been on time anywhere but Boston-New York-Washington
I used to take it between Seattle and Vancouver BC all of the time and it was fine. I also took the Seattle/Portland round-trip once and it was the same (although I hear that one is less reliable).
It sure beats sitting on a bus, IMO. The seats are nicer and so is the scenery out the window.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
It would be a cool project though.
I am not very much confident in the success of this project... Spanish railway system is horrible.
The most recent example is Madrid-Lleida High Speed Railway. It was supposed to "fly" at 350 Km/hour, and hardly ever goes over 200 Km/hour.
nirvanis