Tunnel safety concept for the new railway line Divača - Koper - DRC

1 Introduction
Bopp, R., Žigon, A., Žibert, M.:
Tunnel safety concept for the new railway line Diva a - Koper
Port of Koper is one of most important
centers of logistics and freight transportation
in Slovenia. In year 1967 the new single track
railway line was opened to connect flourishing
port with middle European cities. After
1990 the business growth almost tripled and
with more ambitious projects ahead a need for
a higher capacity railway line was evident. A
new single track railway line between Koper
and Diva a was proposed in a corridor which
is a:
part of V. pan-European transportation
corridor Venice – Kiev and
part of VI. trans-European transportation
corridor Lyon – Budapest
Since the negotiations with Republic of
Italy over the alignment of new railway
section were not finished in time the client
(Government of Republic of Slovenia - Ministry
for Transportation) decided to move
ahead with first stage from Koper to rni Kal
which probably will not be part of the main
corridor.
This new high capacity railway line will
run predominantly through tunnels. As safety
measures may greatly influence the tunnel
design, tunnel safety aspects must be considered
in an early phase of the project and some
fundamental decisions have to be taken. As
these decisions influence not only the safety
but have also wide impacts on the construction
and operation costs of the new railway
line a close examination is necessary.
Figure 1: Location of the railway line regarding pan-european and trans-european corridors
The paper gives first some information
on the relevant guidelines for tunnel safety
and the approach for the development of a
tunnel safety concept. In a second part the
most important safety measures which have
been decided for the Diva a - Koper project
are described.
2 Project overview
2.1 General description
In order to cope with immediate ascent
of the terrain in Koper hinterland the alignment
of the high capacity railway line travels
rather through tunnels in constant gradient
than in many twists on open section like the
existing line.
The whole section of railway line alignment
from Koper to Diva a is characterized
by two distinctive subsections (see Figure 2).
The first section with 6 tunnels and two long
viaducts leads from Koper to rni Kal with a
length of 12.135 km where alignment gains
height traveling just under the surface on the
slopes of Tinjan hill in big circular section
and ends with crossing Osp Vally with long
viaduct. The second section from rni Kal to
Diva a with a length of 15.061 km travels
through 2 deep long straight tunnels in karstic
region. Only the first section will be described
in further text.
More than 7.5 km out of 12.1 km of the
railway line from Koper to rni Kal travels
through tunnels. The distance between portals
of consecutive tunnels in the upper part of this
section is very short. Tunnels T3 to T7 must
therefore be considered as one long tunnel
(see also Table 1)
10. SLOVENSKI KONGRES O CESTAH IN PROMETU, Portorož, 20. – 22. oktobra 2010