Explanatory Memorandum to COM(2002)769 - Minimum safety requirements for tunnels in the Trans-European Road Network - Main contents
Please note
This page contains a limited version of this dossier in the EU Monitor.
| dossier | COM(2002)769 - Minimum safety requirements for tunnels in the Trans-European Road Network. |
|---|---|
| source | COM(2002)769  |
| date | 30-12-2002 |
Contents
- A. Tunnel safety problem
- B. State of the art
- 2 Objective of the proposal
- 3 Content of the proposal
- B. Organisational requirements
- C. Technical requirements
- C 1. Infrastructure
- C 2. OPERATION
- C 3. Vehicles
- C 4. Road users
- 4 Number and location of tunnels falling within the scope of this proposal
- Table: TEN road tunnel inventory
- 5 Justification for an action at Community level
- 6 Appraisal of the proposal
- A. Cost of the measures
- B. Expected benefits
- 7. Conclusion
In its White Paper on transport policy, i the Commission emphasises the need to consider a European Directive on the harmonisation of minimum safety standards to guarantee a high level of safety for the users of tunnels, particularly those in the Trans-European Transport Network.
Indeed, because of the confined environment, accidents in tunnels, and particularly fires, can have dramatic consequences. The fires in the Mont Blanc and Tauern tunnels in 1999 and in the Gotthard tunnel in 2001 have not just raised concerns for safety in road tunnels. Designers, contractors and operators have accumulated experience over many years. However, these dramatic accidents have put the risks in tunnels in the spotlight again and call for decisions at political level.
The number of accidents in tunnels is relatively limited as tunnels are not exposed to adverse weather conditions such as snow, ice, wind and rain, and this is especially true of longer tunnels. However, fires are fairly frequent although, according to international statistics, the majority of vehicle fires are not caused by accidents, but by self-ignition of the vehicle or its load due to defects in electrical systems or overheated engines. On the other hand, fires with the most serious consequences (fires involving injuries, fatalities or extensive material damage) have mostly been the result of accidents (12 out of the 14 worst fires known world-wide), with the exception of the Mont Blanc tunnel fire, which was caused by self-ignition of a heavy goods vehicle.
In addition, the potential disruption of the transport system following a major fire amplifies these consequences and can cause severe disturbances in the economy of a whole region.
In new and renovated road tunnels, structural and technical safety installations usually comply with national and international recommendations, requirements or standards. These safety installations can only be fully effective if they are well operated and combined with an efficient emergency service and correct behaviour on the part of road users. Traffic control and monitoring by the police or other authorities can have a preventive effect. However, the constant and intensive efforts of road construction authorities and traffic police cannot fully eliminate the occurrence of accidents and fires in tunnels.
At international level, the Road Tunnels Committee of the World Road Association (PIARC) has produced a number of recommendations, including a report on fire and smoke control. i Since 1995, PIARC has been conducting a joint project with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on the transport of dangerous goods through road tunnels, with the support of the European Commission.
In September 1999, acknowledging road tunnels safety as a major issue, the Conference of Western European Road Directors (WERD) officially requested Switzerland, France, Austria and Italy to create an informal group (the so-called Alpine Countries group) to evaluate a common approach to this problem. On 14 September 2000, WERD approved the measures for increasing tunnel safety proposed by the Alpine Countries group.
The French Government immediately launched a safety check of all road tunnels longer than 1 km. Within three months, a national evaluation committee examined 40 tunnels. One year later, in August 2000, a new requirement on road tunnels safety i was approved. Similar steps were taken in Germany i and in Austria.
The European Commission held a meeting of experts in September 1999. At that meeting it was suggested that the Economic Commission for Europe of the United Nations (UN-ECE) should be considered as a potential harmonisation forum, in particular within its Working Party on Road Safety (WP1), which deals with road infrastructure. The Commission also included safety in tunnels in its 5th framework research programme. Research projects on durable and reliable tunnel structures (DARTS), the development of decision-support expert system for crisis management in tunnels (SIRTAKI), as well as thematic network on Fires in Tunnels (FIT and SAFE-T) have been funded. Other proposals, relating notably to prevention and information techniques on vehicles or in tunnels are on course.
In Switzerland, the Federal Roads Authority (FEDRO) set up a task force group i in April 1999. The task force studied an extensive range of aspects concerning safety in all tunnels over 600 m in the Swiss highway network. Some short-term measures to increase safety were immediately implemented while others will be put into effect over time.
Railway tunnels also raise safety problems. Moreover, the construction of very long railway tunnels is planned in the EU for the coming decades, e.g. the Lyon-Turin base tunnel (52 km) and the Brenner base tunnel (55 km). Safety requirements for railway tunnels will be addressed in technical specifications, to be adopted in the context of the railway interoperability directives.
The main causes of road accidents are incorrect behaviour of road users, inadequate installations on the road network, vehicles with technical defects and other faults (e.g. defective electrical systems and brakes, overheated engines, etc.) and problems with loads (e.g. unstable loads, chemical reactions).
Structural, technical and organisational road safety measures need to be taken in order to prevent incidents and keep their impact to a minimum. All safety measures have to correspond to the latest state of the art and have to apply to all factors concerned, i.e. road users, emergency services, infrastructure and vehicles.
The following objectives have been set for reaching the optimal level of safety in road tunnels:
* Primary objective: prevention (to prevent critical events that endanger human life, the environment and tunnel installations).
* Secondary objective : reduction of possible consequences (concerning events such as accidents and fires) by providing the ideal prerequisites for
- enabling people involved in the incident to rescue themselves;
- allowing immediate intervention of road users to prevent greater damage;
- ensuring efficient action by emergency services;
- protecting the environment;
- limiting material damage.
In the event of an incident or accident, the first ten to fifteen minutes are crucial when it comes to people saving themselves and limiting damage. The prevention of critical events is therefore the number-one priority, which means that the most important measures to be taken have to be of a preventive nature.
A. Scope
The requirements of the Directive apply to tunnels longer than 500 m in the Trans-European Road Network. i Users can usually escape from tunnels under 500 m on their own, in approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Within this time, hot smoke emitted by the fire is naturally stratified, which makes escape possible. Tunnels shorter than 500 m do not generally need to be equipped with mechanical ventilation systems.
Considering that the diversity of organisations involved in managing, operating, maintaining, repairing and upgrading tunnels increases the risk of accidents, the Commission proposes to harmonise the organisation of safety at national level and to clarify the different roles and responsibilities. In particular, the Commission proposes that each Member State should appoint an Administrative Authority seconded by an Inspection Body. In most cases, Member States will have the possibility of appointing existing administrative services as Administrative Authorities for the purposes of the present Directive. Responsibility for safety in each tunnel will lie with the Tunnel Manager and the responsibility for control with the appointed Safety Officer. The main administrative and organisational provisions introduced by the present Directive are set out in Article 4, 5, 6 and 7 and Annex II.
The level of safety in tunnels is influenced by a variety of factors which can be put under the following four main headings:
* Infrastructure
* Operation
* Vehicles
* Road users
Requirements aimed at reinforcing safety in road tunnels will be established for each group. Technical specifications are stipulated in Article 3 and Annexes I and III. Annex I is based on existing harmonisation efforts at international level, with the exception of the tunnel classification, which is introduced for the purposes of this Directive.
This classification, which leads to five levels of equipment, is based on two parameters, the traffic volume and the tunnel length. No equivalence factor has been adopted for heavy goods vehicles above 3,5 t in the determination of traffic volumes and the thresholds between classes have been established with an assumption of a 15% annual average daily traffic volume for heavy goods vehicles, a normal lane width of 3,50 m and a maximum gradient of less or equal than 3%.
Annex III, which contains harmonised requirements on road signs, is based on the UN/ECE recommendations on road tunnel safety and on the Vienna Convention on road signing, neither of which is binding in the European Union. As recent accidents, notably the fire in the Gotthard tunnel in 2001, show that self-rescuing offers the highest potential for saving lives in the case of an accident in a tunnel, the introduction of clear and self-explanatory signs in sufficient numbers indicating the safety equipment in each tunnel is an important measure that can be implemented at relatively low cost.
Due to the large number of tunnels and interdependencies of the components relevant for safety, new measures need to be carefully co-ordinated. This applies especially to components which have been constructed on the basis of previous standards and need to be transformed to meet the requirement of this Directive.
Road administrations generally specify safety requirements applicable for all highway tunnels, thus attaining the same degree of safety throughout the network. However, a number of national guidelines or regulations already exist, while others are being revised or, in some cases, have yet to be established or completed. These national guidelines or regulations need to be revised and co-ordinated at European level.
Annex I contains the main requirements for infrastructure, which encompass all structural components, ventilation and other electromechanical equipment. In addition, Annex III contains a description of, and requirements for, the positioning of obligatory road signs, panels and pictograms relating to safety.
Twin-tube tunnels offer much higher safety potential in the event of a fire. The Commission proposes thus that single-tube tunnels should only be built if a long-term forecast shows that traffic will remain at a reasonable level (lower than 50% of the saturation level).
The main tasks for the Tunnel Manager are as follows:
* to secure safety for users and operators both in normal status (prevention) and in the event of an incident
* to monitor the efficient performance of all installations (including ventilation, lighting, etc.) during normal operation and adjust them as required in the event of an incident
* to properly maintain all structural and electromechanical installations.
In the event of an incident, the Tunnel Manager has to work closely together with the emergency services. Emergency services must at least be consulted when defining the following tasks:
* operation in emergency cases
* emergency services
* emergency response plans
All heavy goods vehicles, buses and coaches entering tunnels should be equipped with a fire extinguisher, since it is normally easier to put out a fire if it is tackled as soon as it starts. The proposal contain a general obligation but the Commission will envisage more detailed requirements in a more general and appropriate context for all motor vehicles with a maximum permissible mass exceeding 3.5 tonnes.
Heavy goods vehicles are equipped with fuel tanks with an average capacity of 700 litres. However, there is no limit in the motor vehicle technical legislation on the capacity of fuel tanks in heavy-duty vehicles, and truck hauliers frequently use additional tanks without any additional safety control to increase the capacity up to 1500 litres. For these heavy-duty vehicles, this proposal requires that any additional tanks must be empty when passing through tunnels. Corresponding provisions are proposed in paragraph 3 of Annex I. In parallel, the safety problem posed by the high tank capacity that can be mounted on heavy vehicles will be raised in the regulation body responsible for the legislation applicable to motor vehicles.
Heavy goods vehicles carrying dangerous goods or goods of calorific values greater than 30 MW are also especially critical and should be equipped with adequate extinguishing systems. Furthermore, vehicle manufacturers are developing technical solutions to reduce the risk of fire for various functions, e.g. engines, turbochargers and brakes. Where appropriate, the Commission will consider adapting the relevant requirements to technical progress.
In-depth analyses of incidents on roads show that an accident is the consequence of one or more faults in a complex system involving drivers, vehicles, the road and its surroundings.
This proposal does not primarily address questions of human behaviour. However, it should be borne in mind that the principal factor in road accidents is human error. Thus, efforts to increase the level of road safety have to aim primarily at preventing human error. The second step will have to ensure that errors made by drivers do not have serious consequences.
There are various ways of having a direct or indirect influence on the way people act. This proposal calls for better information for road users on tunnel safety, e.g. through information campaigns at national level and improved communication between the Tunnel Manager and road users inside a tunnel.
This Directive contains provisions applicable to tunnels in operation, tunnels under construction and tunnels at the design stage.
Several sources have been used to set up an inventory of both existing and future TEN road tunnels.
The UN-ECE has set up an inventory of road tunnels longer than 1000 m. This inventory includes 370 tunnels with a total length of 900 km, 182 of which are located in the Trans-European Road Network, with a total length of 446 km.
A large number of EU road tunnels are currently at the construction or planning stage and have also been included in the inventory. UN-ECE and other sources have been used to identify tunnels scheduled to open in the future. As a result, 64 tunnels with a total length of 172 km have been identified.
Greece is expected to add the largest number of TEN tunnels longer than 1000 m: 16 new tunnels with a total length of 36 km, nearly all on the Egnatia Motorway. Italy will add 13 tunnels longer than 1000 m and Germany 12.
Tunnels between 500 m to 1000 m in length were not covered by the UN-ECE database, and so were identified primarily on the basis of Member States' statistics and other sources. A similar process was used to identify new TEN tunnels of this length.
A total of 216 existing TEN road tunnels of 500 m to 1000 m length were identified, 70% of which are located in Italy. The total length of these tunnels is 151 km. An additional 50 TEN road tunnels of 500 m to 1000 m, with a total length of 39 km, are expected to open within the next five years.
At present, the density of tunnels in Italy and Austria exceeds by far the density of tunnels in the European Union as a whole.
>TABLE POSITION>
In addition, Norway is the only EEA country with tunnels over 500 m length in the major road network, with 130 tunnels of a total length of 200 km.
Only three candidate countries have tunnels longer than 500 m. In the TINA network, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Slovakia have 4, 5 and 1 tunnels respectively in this category, with a total length of 15 km.
This proposal is based on Article 71 of the Treaty establishing the European Communities and applies to long tunnels located in the Trans-European Road Network, which are essential for long distance transport inside the European Union.
In all Member States with the exception of Finland and Ireland, there are tunnels which fall within the scope of the Directive. They have been built to specifications that with time have become outdated; either their equipment no longer corresponds to the state of the art or traffic conditions have substantially changed since their initial opening. In general, there are no legal mechanisms at national level to oblige tunnel managers to improve safety once the tunnels are put into service.
It is clear that the risk of serious fires in tunnels has significantly increased in recent years. Insufficient co-ordination has been identified as a contributory factor to accidents in trans-boundary tunnels. Moreover, recent serious accidents show that non-native users are at greater risk of becoming a victim in an accident, due to the lack of harmonisation of safety information, communication and equipment.
This Directive will improve the protection of road users and vital infrastructure. Any absence of action is deemed to be detrimental, since accidents in tunnels have proven to be extremely costly in terms of human lives, increased congestion, pollution, risks and reparation.
To assess the different options for the purposes of implementing the measures envisaged, the Commission commissioned the ICF Consulting Ltd company to carry out a cost/benefit study. The first results, which were available in May 2002, were presented and discussed, alongside the requirements themselves, with national experts on 21 May and 12 September 2002. While they accept the general lines of the proposed requirements, the experts made various technical comments. These were taken into account where appropriate in the preparation of the final proposal.
Improvement costs include three components: refurbishment and equipment, operational costs, and costs of traffic delay caused by the refurbishment. Costs for refurbishing road tunnels in accordance with the full set of requirements of Annex I can be very high, because tunnels are the most expensive road infrastructure. For this reason, the Directive allows Member States to implement less costly measures under certain conditions where they achieve a sufficient safety level. For this purpose, the classification system introduced in Annex I differentiates requirements according to traffic volumes and length, and a clause in the proposal allows Member States to accept alternative risk reduction measures when refurbishment costs are excessive in relation to the costs of a new tunnel. However, these results clearly demonstrate the need to prioritise tunnel safety investments, starting with the tunnels with the highest traffic volume and the greatest risk of accidents.
The cost of structural work may be reduced by a factor of up to five for tunnels that benefit from a derogation. The total cost for the proposal is in the range of 2.6 billion Euro to 6.3 billion Euro. The latter figure assumes that all existing tunnels will be adapted to meet the provisions of new tunnels. The lower figure is an estimate where certain modifications in tunnel structure are replaced by alternative measures, such as traffic restrictions.
Refurbishment and equipment account for the majority of costs, though traffic delay is estimated to account for one quarter of the costs.
The costs incurred by the proposed Directive will be borne by the Member States.
The expected benefits of the measures include:
- The benefit of accidents avoided or contained. Direct costs of recent tunnel fires, including repair costs, exceed by far the one million Euro average direct cost of a fatal road accident indicated in the Communication on road safety in 1997. i Direct costs of tunnel accidents have been evaluated on the basis of a review of the recent literature and the collection of limited data on recent accidents. They are estimated at 210 million Euro per year.
- Indirect costs on the economy resulting from the closure of a tunnel should also be taken into account. Following the Mont Blanc accident and its subsequent closure, studies calculated these costs to be within a range of 300 to 450 million Euro per year for Italy alone i.
- Significant potential indirect benefits of this Directive should also be considered. Tunnel closure as a consequence of an accident is prejudicial not only to the regional economy but also to the national and in some cases even to the whole European economy. It increases transport costs, reduces the competitiveness of the areas affected by the closure and has an adverse effect on road safety, as it tends to lengthen journeys, thus increasing risk exposure for all road users for a potentially long period. i
The 'White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010: Time to Decide' presents a two-phase approach to the issue of tunnel safety.
In the short to medium term, the proposed legislation will set minimum standards to rapidly guarantee a high level of safety for users of road tunnels. As announced, the proposal encompasses the main technical and operational safety-related aspects: technical equipment (e.g. ventilation and extraction devices, shelters, escape galleries), traffic rules (e.g. traffic restrictions, alternating traffic), training of operating staff to cope with a major accident, rescue organisation, information to users on 'how to react in the event of a fire' and means of communication to facilitate user evacuation in the event of a fire.
The recent tunnel fires raise the question, finally, of the sustainability of transport, particularly in mountainous areas. In this respect, a coherent approach to developing medium and long-term solutions, including a shift in transport modes, is one of the priorities set out in the White Paper on Transport Policy. These measures will largely help to reduce the risk of accidents in tunnels, in line with the attached proposal.
The Commission therefore proposes that the European Parliament and the Council adopt this Directive on minimum safety requirements for road tunnels in the Trans-European Road Network.
In the meantime, the Commission is setting up a working group of national experts from the Member States and competent organisations with the following objectives:
- to gather the data needed to prepare a harmonised procedure for risk analysis;
- to prepare further improvements to the minimum safety provisions for construction, operation, maintenance, repair, upgrading, rehabilitation and refurbishment of tunnels of various types and lengths, and to improve traffic conditions in these tunnels, e.g. signs, restrictions on vehicles and dangerous goods, driver training;
- to collect information on safety provisions in tunnels, in particular on new traffic management techniques.
Once the Member States have designated their Administrative Authorities, the Commission will ensure that they are represented in the Group of Experts, which will also act as liaison between Member States. The Commission will also invite representatives from competent organisations at international level and from third countries, notably Switzerland and Norway, in order to take account of their opinions and experience on specific issues and ensure good co-operation.