Later this month, a new tunnel will be opened on the outer ring road around Paris, the Volkskrant reports. At a cost of 2.4 billion euros, it is France’s most expensive tunnel ever, and supposedly also its safest ever. The full tunnel will be 10 km long; initially, only the first stretch of 4.5 km will be put to use. In order to make the tunnel as safe as possible, it will be closed for motorcycles and trucks.

Okay, so how can you only open a tunnel for half of its length? I’m not gonna drive into a 10-km tunnel if I get stuck after 4.5 km. I’m sure the tunnel actually consists of separate segments, but the newspaper article was specifically talking about “a tunnel”, not “one of two tunnels”.

On a more serious note, what’s with denying entrance to motorcycles and trucks? You know what would make this tunnel even safer? Close it for all motorized traffic! I can see how it might be a good idea to make separate lanes for cars and trucks, and to keep out trucks with highly inflammable cargo, but it seems ridiculous to just close it for all trucks.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 15:06 and is filed under Random musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.