TUNNEL BUILT UNDER FRONTIER

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19270, 6 January 1931, Page 4

TUNNEL BUILT UNDER FRONTIER

DETROIT AND CANADA CONNECTED BY SUBWAY. The Detroit and Canada Tunnel, connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, is the first vehicular subway ever built between two nations. Two others are in use in the United States—the Holland Tunnel in New York and the George A. Posey Tunnel, connecting Oakland and Alameda, California. The Detroit and Canada Tunnel is approximately a mile long from portal to portal. The American portal is but a few hundred feet from the centre of the financial and shopping districts of Detroit, while the Canadian end is located in the very heart of Windsor’s rapidlj' expanding business centre. The roadway in the tunnel is 22 feet wide, allowing one lane of traffic in each direction and an extra lane to spare. The estimated capacity is 1000 vehicles an hour in each direction. The project has been under construction for two and a half years and is costing approximately 25,000,000 dollars. Ventilation has been designed to keep air in the tunnel purer than air in the street outside. Disabled automobiles will be removed quickly and safely. Traffic will be regulated so that, despite a fairly high rate of speed, driving in the tu:i::_l' will be safer than surface driving in the surrounding streets. Three separate methods of construction \vefe employed in building Detroit’s great sub-aqueous highwa3 j - to Canada. Probably the most spectacular construction feature was the fabrication, launching, towing and sinking of the nine steel tubes comprising the under-water portion of the tunnel. These tubes have an aggregate length of more than half a mile, all of which is under water. Next in spectacular appeal were the shield-driven sections, amounting to a quarter of a mile. The rest of the tube was built by the so-called cut-and-cover method and through excavation of open approaches. Thus one half of the tunnel will be seen to be under water and the other half under land. The tunnel will prove a boon for travellers going eastward via Niagara Falls, effecting a saving of more than 100 miles over the shore route south of Lake Erie. It also will be extremely convenient for growing numbers of Detroiters owning summer homes on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie, and for many others who annually resort in the Georgian Bay and Muskoka Lake districts of Northern Canada. Commuters, however, -will find the tunnel most useful of all. Ending as it does, in the business district of both Detroit and Windsor, this tunnel will enable commuters to travel from City Hall in from three to five minutes. A miniature city has been erected at each end of the tunnel for housing tunnel officials, and equipment. Some ten structures have been built on each side of the river. Terminal plazas are large, so that traffic entering or leaving the tunnel spreads out fanwise to facilitate rapid inspection by Customs authorities. International travel at this point should take on a new spurt when, the tunnel is opened.