Talk:Transatlantic tunnel

message: If one billion people were to take a trip on this thing, the construction costs alone would be $12,000 each, not counting interest. Of course there are operating expenses as well and some profit. I could see a trip costing as much as $50,000 each way.
The biggest reason this won't be built - terrorism. It would be a bigger target than the WTC.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.100.48.167 (talk) 17:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The main barriers to constructing such a tunnel are cost—as much as $12 trillion[ 

message: The original estimates for the project ranged between 80-175 Billion USD, not in the trillions.
Let's just assume.. (150e9(1+.04)^20)/(2*10*X*1000*365)=20
The above equation assumes the project would cost $150BN, a government loan with 4% interest, 20 years to pay back, trains leave 10 times a day 365 days a year, huge trains carry 1000 passengers and that trains would be running both NY to London and London to NY as there are two tracks.
The wholesale price of a ticket would then be $2251 each way. That is actually quite feasible for crossing the the Atlantic in less than an hour. What does a first class ticket run these days? In this example the tunnel is *only* used by a puny 20 thousand passengers per day. How many fly across the Atlantic?
It's pretty likely however that departures would be a lot more frequent. Why wait? With the right automation you could have departures every minute if you really wanted to. The distance between trains would still be roughly 6000km/h*1min=100km! Double the departures means you can half the ticket cost.
The above formula with departures every 10 min results in a wholesale ticket cost of $157. Worth it? Enter the most believable numbers and see what you get!
I realize this is a very rough model which doesn't take upkeep into account. Compared to flying though, upkeep of a vactrain would be close to nill. Which is why airlines and existing magtain makers might lobby to the last breath to prevent this from happening.
In fact, if safety is a concern, you could start with cargo first. This would test automation technologies before human traffic is introduced. No emissions, no friction means overhead per weight would be negligible.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlantic-maglev
"There are also some issues with what the purpose of such a tunnel would be. If it is intended for passengers, then the journey might be too slow to make it competitive with aircraft. If intended for freight, then a Bering Strait bridge or tunnel could present fewer problems".
This is wrong.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.196.50.130 (talk) 14:12, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cost/gain assumptions 

message: A few thoughts off the top of my head:
The proposed tunnel would have to pass over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is the boundary between two tectonic plates, which are spreading apart at about 2.5 cm per year. So, if the tunnel is to last say 100 years, like most other major tunnels, it will lengthen by over 2 metres at the ridge. This alone is enough, I would say, to eliminate the driven (excavated) tunnel form - you could not safely build in this flexibility over the comparatively short distance of the ridge. But the tethered floating tunnel could work, if the tethers were designed to spread the change in length over a sufficient distance. It would be safer from lava flows and earthquakes, too.
A major set of problems with any physical form of this tunnel is the development and agreement of emergency and maintenance procedures. Agreement would be needed before the design was completed, in fact before a budget cost could be put to financiers, because the emergency facilities would cost a great deal of money, and it is not immediately clear what is needed. How many tunnels, and how do you gain access between them?
* What happens when (not if) a train breaks down? How do you move it out, how long does it take, and how do you look after the passengers during this lengthy period? Does the number of passengers per train have to be reduced for this emergency condition?
* What about a fire on a train? Presumably you can take steps to isolate the fire, moving passengers to other cars (if you have left sufficient space), but carry on with the journey. You can't stop the train and have the passengers walk out along the track...
* What about a bomb, already mentioned above? A small bomb might allow the train to continue, albeit full of dead passengers, but a large one would damage the tunnel itself, as well as killing everybody.
* How do the emergency services gain access in any of these conditions? How do they work in vacuum? If you aim to feed air back into the tunnel to allow them to work, how long does it take and how do you do it?
* How many tunnels do you need? The Channel Tunnel has 3, one in each direction and a service tunnel (used also for emergency access), with frequent connections between them. With the trains running in vacuum, can you adopt a dual-track tunnel? There would be no air pressure wave problems.
* How do you inspect the track and other tunnel fittings? How do you maintain and repair them? Can you do the necessary work safely in a dual track tunnel, with one track only running? Can you do the work in vacuum?
Agreement on these matters would take many years, and it is Murphy's law that the emergency services on the two sides of the Atlantic would not agree with each other.
Oh, one other point. How do the trains transition from vacuum to normal air? At the stations, you might be able to provide the transition for the passengers only, leaving the trains in vacuum, but all the trains will need to be taken out of service for maintenance and repair, so air locks would be needed.
None of this really matters, of course, because the scheme is obviously hopelessly non-viable financially. Sorry to be a wet blanket.  Patche99z (talk) 14:39, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it would be very viable financially; can you imagine the benefits from being able to go from New York to London and back in a single day? As for some of the other questions: Presumably there'd be tow trains to pull a foundering train to a station, might take a while. I'd figure two or three tunnels, though they could start with one. And as for 'transitioning from vacuum to normal air', why can't the entire train take an airlock at the end? Once it's reached just before the station, have the whole train enter an airlock. --Golbez (talk) 14:52, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your comments, but I think we must agree to disagree on financial viability. So far as I can see from the references in the article, no multi-discipline expert study has been done, so the costs must be pure guesses - hence opinions on viability are guesses too. My guess is based on the bits and pieces I know about other large engineering projects, and I stick by it. But I agree with you on the problem of airlocks - this is a comparatively minor matter. My rather grumpy bullet points above are illustrating an area of expertise (not mine) that is needed before capital costs can be assessed. Then passenger capacity must be assessed, with passenger forecasts, leading to revenue projections and running costs. All I see in the references so far are superficial engineering ideas for the tunnel and type of train. Well, of course, many schemes start as pie-in-the-sky ideas, and gradually progress to actuality. But this one will not come in my lifetime, nor yours (however old you are!) Patche99z (talk) 13:30, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Mid-Atlantic Ridge]] and other problems

message: It's odd that this article doesn't mention the plate tectonics issues due to the need of crossing from Eurasian Plate to North American Plate. That is an active tectonic place (earthquakes, submarine vulcans...), not somehwere you'd like to build a train railway on the sea floor. Moreover, even with floating designs seafloor spreading would likely bring issues due to the need to enlarge the floating tunnel a few centimeters each year.  Platonides (talk) 14:00, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seafloor spreading 

message: What would the minimum length of a direct tunnel between NY and London (or Lisbon?) be? And what would the minimum length of the route Newfoundland-Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Islands be? --134.176.204.29 (talk) 00:34, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The great circle from NYC to Lisbon is 5430km, which is a bit longer. bobrayner (talk) 01:32, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Length 

message: It seems that the idea of a transatlantic tunnel goes back at least as far as 1867. See "Tunnel Under the Atlantic" on page 45 of this book: https://books.google.com/books?id=lN0aAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45#v=onepage&q&f=false  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.1.101.59 (talk) 20:24, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  History/early interest 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: Donald Fagan in his son I.G.Y. references an undersea rail system where an imaginary transport system, designed in the late 1950's could take a person from "New York to Paris" "in ninety minutes." Hopeglory000 (talk) 19:33, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cultural Reference