Joe is correct.  The tunnel that Dillon looked at was a vehicle tunnel and the recent proposal of the TPA was for a pedestrian tunnel, but we believe the costs would be similar. 

We talked to an engineer about the pedestrian tunnel and he sketched out the difficulties that construction would present.

The tunnel proposed by the TPA is quite wide, almost the width of a Toronto street.  There would no costs to build access ramps needed for a vehicle tunnel, but the other costs are similar. 

The real costs of building a tunnel under the Western Gap is that subsoil is shale.  This presents serious cave in problems.  Not only would the ceiling have to be shored up during and after construction, but shale presents a leakage problem.  The entire tunnel, roof, sides and floor, would have to be water tight.

All of this presents serious construction problems that increase the costs.  We have not done an engineering study, but our initial inquiries suggest that this would be an expensive project, much more than the $38 million estimate of the TPA.

The TPA was inviting both the federal and provincial governments to participate in the project, and as far as we could see they had done little more than a rough estimate of the costs.  Who will pay the cost overruns?

Bill Freeman