Increasing road safety in local tunnel construction

Abstract

Increasing safety on the road network is a current and prominent issue in the international road sector. In order to analyse the safety of the existing tunnels along the Maltese road network, a survey will be carried out and an inventory will be established. The collected data will then be analysed in detail. The European Commission has lately issued a memo stating that all the tunnels longer than 500m, which are already in operation, under construction or at the design stage, should have a certain standard of safety. This should be reflected in the design of the tunnels, being proposed along the Trans European Network for Malta and Gozo. Each of these proposed tunnels will have a length greater than one kilometre, which is considerably higher than that of the existing local tunnels.