Dublin Port Tunnel

Leading from East Point/East Wall, Dublin 3 to Santry, Dublin 9, the tunnel connects the Dublin Port in central Dublin with the M1 motorway in its northern suburbs. It is roughly 4.5 km long overall, its fully bored segment being ca. 2 km long, with open face boring machine and cut and cover tunnel segments making up the rest. The tunnel is intended to relieve surface road congestion by delivering heavy goods vehicles (HGV) leaving the port onto the motorway network without passing through Dublin's congested city centre. To this end, it has been suggested that HGVs will travel at no cost while a toll — set at €6 at off-peak hours and €12 during peak hours with the intention of discouraging car use — will be levied on other classes of vehicle. The extent to which southbound traffic will opt for this circuitous route over making the shorter but slower journey through the city is unknown. The tunnel was apparently necessitated by the lack of space for building a suitable surface relief road — some argue that such attempts would never have reached planning permission.

The tunnel was built by Japanese-British-Irish consortium NMI (Nishimatsu– Mowlem– Irishenco), in part using a German-designed TBM (tunnel boring machine). Tunnel excavation works were completed and the final boring machine breakthrough ceremony took place on 18 August 2004. Further works continue on the tunnel and it is anticipated to open in spring 2006.

Even before the commencement of tunnel boring works, the tunnel was publicly criticised for not being high enough. Critics argued that it would not be able to accommodate heavy goods vehicles higher than 4.65 metres when it should have been built with an operating height of 5.5 metres in mind to accommodate virtually all sizes of trucks. Proponents of the current tunnel argue that it was the best deal and that it was anticipated to be able to accommodate most heavy vehicles, with only a minor percentage of trucks still having to use the surface road network. Construction went ahead as planned, despite the limitations. However, even at the breakthrough ceremony, Jimmy Quinn of the Irish Road Haulage Association stated that a future generation may look back and say (about the tunnel not being high enough for very high trucks): "Maybe they should have done it when they were building it."

This article is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dublin Port Tunnel".

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