Talk:List of tunnels by length

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[edit] List of tunnel by depth

How about a table listening tunnels by their maximum rock coverage?

Like this: http://www.japan-tunnel.org/nttj/statistical_data/index2.html

Coccodrillo 18:59, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Metro tunnels

Metro tunnels should be excluded from the main table, in my opinion. They could stay in the separate table, if you like. Metro tunnel as I said are always near the surface and made by several shorter tunnels. There are hundreds of subways, it's useless to add the lenght of all their tunnels. Maybe some particular tunnels could be added (the BART tunnel under the Bay in San Francisco, as example). Coccodrillo 08:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Future of this article?

Any ideas on what should be done with this article, compared with List of tunnels?--ZorroIII 09:04, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the Guinness Book of Records. Perhaps a section on the engineering difficulties of building a long tunnel might be useful...
No, it isn't, but a plain list list of thousand of uninteresting tunnel would be useless. Coccodrillo 14:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it is -- a list of thousands of interesting tunnels would be quite useful. Ah, the nature of the Wiki-free-for-all...

[edit] No CERN?

Surely LEP's 27 km tunnel warrants inclusion.

[edit] Other types of tunnels

The CERN tunnel is one example. Another is the networks of tunnels in places where they were used for warfare or as escape routes. Would those be included in such a listing??

I think the middle table, named "Vehicular" should be skipped. The bottom table ("Top 100") covers those tunnels anyway. Tables of other kinds of tunnels could be a good addition.--Blue Elf 20:26, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

If someone wants to include other types of tunnels (industrial/mine/others not for public) then try to find some info and go ahead. Minimum requirement: walkable. Some war escape/hiding tunnels are so narrow that they are crawlable, not walkable. I have added some metro railway tunnels, noone else has. - BIL 14:34, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Norðoyatunnilin (Faroe Islands)

According to my sources (Stamps.fo and the Danish travel guide Turen går til Færøerne of 2005), the tunnel is on 6,300 m and thus some places more in top of the ranking. Where is the 6,100 m in the article from? -- Arne List 19:54, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Railway tunnels (excluding subways)

Why are subways excluded from this? It seems entirely arbitrary, and excludes some very long tunnels. At the very least, it needs it's own category. Until relatively recently, the Morden to East Finchley section of the London Underground's Northern Line was the world's longest tunnel.

It is hard to define what a tunnel is: some underground tunnels are very long, but just under the surface. It is harder (normally) to build 20 km of tunnel under 2000 m of mountains than 100 km of subway tunnel, under 50 m of rocks (build it without causing damages to the buildings on the surface, that is another matter). I think subway tunnels should not be included (often, there are more short tunnels linked one to another). Coccodrillo 17:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Be honest, you just want to exclude cut-and-cover. And that's fine. As for the mountains-only idea, the Marmaray underwater tunnel is most interesting and is of decent length. 24.200.248.28 05:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Marmaray in my opinion can be included, because is not a subway... Coccodrillo 18:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, I think we should exclude tunnels that have not been opened, are or have just been proposed. FrFintonStack 18:30, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

While I agree that many proposed tunnels will not be built und thus cause a bloated listing, I think that tunnels well under construction should be mentioned. Maybe not in the main table but then in an additional list.--Klaus with K 09:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I added two long Subway/Metro/Underground/Rapid tranist (whichever it is called) tunnels as you suggested. It is hard to find info about such tunnels. /BIL 23:35, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I can add the fact that they were completely removed from the German version of this article, since the stations could not be called tunnels, in their eyes. The Subway tunnels have more passengers than any other tunnel, but still there is hard to find info about them. I have measured some with detailed maps and Google Earth. -- BIL 22:32, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Subways are usually made of several sub-surface tunnels, sometimes built underground, sometimes by cut&cover. I think that these tunnels should not added to this article at all, simply because...there are hundreds of subway lines in the world, each dozens km long, with several other service tunnels. I think a table with the length of hundreds of subways lines is of no interest. Maybe a page about building tunnels in an urban environment, with some exemples, could be more interesting. Coccodrillo 18:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Above, a number of reasons have been given why not to have them in a list, no one good. They are too shallow, they are too long and too many, etc. There are many railway tunnels also but few so long. I can agree one thing, there is very hard to find info about the tunnel lengths. I have used maps and satellite images for some of them, but that could count as original research, that Wikipedia should not be the only place that has published some infomation. -- BIL 22:27, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New organisation idea

Here is a proposal on how to structure the tunnel lists.

List of tunnels would be a central navigational page, leading to:
List of tunnels by length, purely based on length, not type
List of tunnels by type, with sections for rail and road etc (much like this current page)
List of tunnels by location, sorted into countries

We would have a navigation template at the top of each article, linking to the others.

Disadvantage of List of tunnels being rather empty, and a new tunnel needs to be mentioned on three pages. But I think these are minor objections.--Klaus with K 09:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
P.S. The German longest-tunnel-page de:Liste der längsten Tunnel der Erde looks well-structured to me.--Klaus with K 09:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


Another idea: the distances should be km (mi). This convention is generally followed (eg the road tunnels on this page don't even list the imperial measurement), but not everywhere on this lists. It makes sense because most of the tunnels use km, ie they are built in countries using metres.--Commander Keane 13:58, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Distances should be metric, I slightly prefer metres over kilometres. As for the imperial measurement, the really real proper way is to use miles and chains.--Klaus with K 09:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Distances should be metric first. If no one objects, I will switch soon.--Jusjih 05:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
No objection, only suggenstions... Length in metres (miles) ... merge the tables and add a small width column (Rail, Road, Metro, Water, Canal...) ... what do you think about comments like on the German page? If you think they make sense I could be convinced to write/translate them.--Klaus with K 16:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I cannot read German, so if you wish, please translate.--Jusjih 01:59, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
These comments read like 'longest rail tunnel' 'longest road tunnel' 'longest underwater distance' 'longest land-based tunnel' and so on. If you add a comment column, I could add some contents when I find time (it is not that much).--Klaus with K 14:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Avoid water tunnels ?

We should avoid water pipes and tunnels, otherwise we could consider including gas and oil pipelines, often buried, thousands of km. A requirement could be that it shall be used to transport people. /BIL 18:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Should we keep a list of "Longest continuous rock tunnel" ? The article about the Bolmen Water Tunnel (82 km) just barely was allowed to exist. There was a vote about whether to delete it. That hints that this type of tunnel is not so interesting. OK, the two listed here are long and more than 2 m in diameter, but still ? BIL 18:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Some tunnels built for boats exists: they shuld be included in a separate table! http://home.no.net/lotsberg/ Coccodrillo 17:31, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Why should we avoid water tunnels? That makes no sense. Gas and oil pipes can not be used as an excuse, since they are not tunnels and thus would not be included in the list anyway. I can not see any reason why the requirement should be transporting people. But if such a limitation is set, then that should be mentioned in the article, and the name of the article should be changed to something like "List of road and railway tunnels by length". Current situation is very misleading.
The table "The world's longest tunnels - in use" claims that the longest tunnel is Seikan Tunnel (53 km). However, Päijänne Water Tunnel is 120 km. And it is not a "pipe", it is a rock tunnel big enough for a truck. --PauliKL (talk) 15:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
They are included in List of further tunnels by length article, i think that is enough. --Jklamo (talk) 17:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion for the merged tables

Name Location metres (miles) Type Year Comment
Seikan Tunnel Tsugaru Strait, Japan 53,850 (33.5) Railway 1988 longest tunnel
Channel Tunnel English Channel, England - France 49,940 (31.1) Railway 1994
Hakkoda Tunnel Hakkoda Mountains, Japan 25,810 (16.5) Railway 2010 longest land tunnel
Lærdal Laerdal - Aurland, Norway 24,510 (15.2) Road 2000 longest road tunnel
St. Gotthard Alps, Switzerland 16,918 (10.2) Road 1980

I tentatively shortened the Length in metres (miles) and the Year Completed in an attempt to have less empty space in the table. For now I do not have line breaks inside the table cells.--Klaus with K 13:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merged tables started

I have started to merge the tables, so far railway and road included. Metre values mostly taken from http://home.no.net/lotsberg/data/rail.html and http://home.no.net/lotsberg/data/tun10.html as the old metric values were rounded, some even having suffered metric->imperial->metric conversion. Some metre values look to me like still rounded to the nearest 10m or 100m. Table cutoff a function of my available time today, see notes inside the tables.--Klaus with K 20:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I see the necessity to keep the column entries short, the table tends to get quite wide (and the year ranges for the tube tunnels do not help either but I do no know how to avoid it in these cases of staged construction). Short: no multiple mentioning as in Railway/Railroad or Metro/Subway/Tube/Underground, even the single Railroad is slightly on the long side. Distinctive: avoid similarities like Road vs Railroad, Railway vs Subway.--Klaus with K 21:35, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No Rank numbers please

As new tunnels are being built and completed, each single new entry added to a table would require the change of all subsequent rank numbers which is a maintenance pain. Hence no ordinal numbers please.--Klaus with K 10:46, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

According to Road tunnels under construction there are 8 road tunnels to open in the next 4 years. Who is going to edit all these rank numbers in Vehicular each time?--Klaus with K 11:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
And I planned to merge some of the double-tube tunnels into one, some are considered different tunnels. I planned to rank only top ten, now I have to remove the numbers. /BIL 12:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merged vehicular tunnel table

We should merge the two tables for Road tunnels. The question is which format ? I waited for a principle regarding the format of other tables, but there is no real agreement between them. I assume I will use the format of the merged table, without the "type" column. In princle as the "Vehicular" but metres and a comment column. /BIL 11:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Why only merge the two Road table and not include them in the merged tables at the top? Is it because at any given length there are far more rail than road tunnels?
Ok, now to your question. Yes, format of merged table, without type and rank, would do fine. If possible use accurate numbers for the metre values, see sources above. Any opinion whether to preserve the opening days when given?--Klaus with K 16:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi BIL, I see you start editing. Remarks from my side:

  • Do away with the rank. Each new tunnel means editing loads of rank numbers.
  • Add miles as well. As a metric person I do not care, but there is imperial folk.
  • Adding info on second tube is good, however, one cannot see whether the old or the new tube is longer. Maybe specify older or younger in place of second. As you use <br>between year, the table entry already is two lines high, so you could do the same for the two lengths, and comment two tubes without the length.

So far my constructive criticism for tonight.--Klaus with K 18:52, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Why list numerous vehicular examples by nation, then throw in one listed by an American state? That's apples and oranges. Why not use the same denominator?

[edit] Seikan

The Seikan Tunnel hosts two cape gauge (1067 mm) tracks, so it is useless to write "longest metre-gauge tunnel" about the Vereina.

I'm trying to write dedicated pages for some tunnel, such as the Vereina Tunnel. Someone should correct my English. Coccodrillo 13:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The Simplon Tunnel should be considered as only one thing. It's true that they were opened 15 years apart, but it's common to open the second tube of any tunnel only when the traffic requires it. Coccodrillo 17:43, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of further tunnels by length

Tagged since over a year, I have a bold moment and shall tidy up this page. Noting that people have invested work into the non-merged sections, I'll move this content to a page to be named List of further tunnels by length and leave it to others if they feel this leftover sections should be reorganised differently.--Klaus with K 16:43, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Metres --> Kilometres?

I don't think this needs to be in metres. There is no need for 5 figure accuracy here. An extra decimal can be added in order to seperate an tunnels that are close in length. Agree/Dissagree?Shniken1 02:18, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Disagree Technical information is given in metres, the plans are of better accuracy than mere metres, and I do not see a reason why one should downgrade information. Adding decimals later means sourcing information again, giving different numbers of decimals makes for an incoherent appearance of the table. -- Klaus with K 09:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Disagree per Klaus with K, anyway for correct length sorting we need at least 4 figure accuracy --Jklamo 16:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mont d'Ambin Base Tunnel

This tunnel is at planning stage. Some intermediate access on the french side have ben built, but nothing on the italian side and it is not sure that the main tunnel will be built. There have been seveal announces, but nothing has been done untill today. Coccodrillo (talk) 22:19, 5 February 2008 (UTC)