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Why are there so many tunnels under London?
- zhuzhu 13y agoThe city is too old.
- cmajewsk 13y agoI don't know about 'too old', but it is old. It states in the article that..." the London Underground, opened in the city 150 years ago.: The county I am living in currently, will be celebrating only its 42 birthday tomorrow...think about it.
- corin_ 13y agoThat's a little like looking at a baby who was born a year ago and calling it old because of another that was born earlier today.
- nailer 13y agoLondon is a Roman town, much older than England (edit: and that's just name, as the poster below mentions the city has existed much longer). the queen still has to ask permission to enter the City (now called the square mile). The underground (aka the Tube) is new, but the city itself is very, very old.
- corin_ 13y agoSorry, I wasn't commenting on the age of London, just the method of defining any country/city as old compared to a decades-old country.
- trumbitta2 13y agoLondon is actually pre-roman, maybe pre-celtic, tbh.
- claudius 13y agoAnd I am very thankful that the undergrounds in the cities where I spent most of my time were built much later: Tunnelling techniques evolved quickly during the late 18th and early 19th century, allowing for much more ‘comfortable’ tunnel diameters – there is a reason the London Underground is called the tube, it’s difficult to stand in most of its trains.
- therobotking 13y agoThis is complete nonsense. It's perfectly easy to stand up in the underground train cars.
- nemesisj 13y agoThere are two sizes of tube trains - "deep tube" and "sub surface" trains. The deep tube trains are much smaller, and they are difficult to stand in if you're near the doors for anyone who's over 6 feet (I'm 6'4"). That said, it's not the end of the world, as you're only standing there when it's crowded, but it does happen. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground#Trains http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground#Trains
- ColinWright 13y agoHow tall are you? I'm 5'11", or 1.80 m, and I have no trouble at all standing in trains on the London underground.
- claudius 13y agoRoughly 1.95m and while standing in the very middle is possible, it does feel more like an airplane rather than a train. Admittedly, I also like to have some space above my head and don’t always feel perfectly comfortable in tight spaces, so that might well contribute to a (perceived) lack of space.
- justincormack 13y agoMost of the early ones were "cut and cover" and quite big, rather than bored. And there is little difference in the sizes of the tunnelled ones.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sambeau 13y agoTo add a little perspective I live in rural England in a small thatched house that appears on a map dated 1420. That's 30 years before Christopher Columbus was born — and Richard III; 100 years before Queen Elizabeth I was born. It was built before chimneys were invented: one was fitted at some point, probably at the same time the upstairs floor was put in (you can't have an upstairs without a chimney). The refurbishment date is scratched into the plaster work: Feb 1722.
- mjn 13y agoJust new enough that you can usually safely dig without too many delays, though. A problem with tunnel construction in very old cities, in places like Italy and Greece, is that you have a high probability of running into an interesting archaeological site, and then you have to pause construction and decide what to do about it. E.g.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21743758 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21743758
- swombat 13y agoThat has happened with Crossrail actually... for example, the Liverpool Street station digging uncovered countless artefacts from Bedlam, aka Bethlehem Mental Hospital. Human remains and other things that can't just be tunnelled through = delays...
- trumbitta2 13y agoNot so new as you may have thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londinium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londinium It's just way bigger than its ancient self, so you are less likely to find archeological sites.
- alister 13y ago> in very old cities ... running into an interesting archaeological site Why are archaeological sites are so far underground? Are ancient cities actually getting higher in altitude as old ruins get covered up? Why Pompeii was buried is clear. I am more curious about continuously occupied cities like Rome. How did the ruins get underground there? The best answer I could find was this: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/813/how-come-archaeological-ruins-are-always-underground http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/813/how-come-archae... It says that abandoned ancient cities have in fact risen in altitude over the centuries becoming "mounds". But it also says that Rome's famous ruins are at surface level, but doesn't explain ruins that have been found deep underground. So I'm left wondering if Rome and cities like it have gotten a lot higher or not.
- tallanvor 13y agoWell, it's not so much that the ruins are likely to be found "deep" underground, but some are as much as 3 or 4 stories underground. It used to be that it was easier to build on top of existing structures - or the remains thereof - rather than cart the trash out and start fresh. If you ever go to Rome, you'll notice that the Colosseum, for example, is at surface level, but most of the land around it is raised up. During street work, you can see parts where they've uncovered foundations, often digging down quite a ways to get to what was the street level at the time. In a place like Rome, when they uncover new ruins, they'll generally be studied for a while and then covered back up because it's the easiest way to preserve the site because they still need the land above it to be usable.
- ColinWright 13y agoThe difference between America and England is that the Americans think 100 years is a long time, whereas the English think 100 miles is a long way. Just for reference ... My house was built in 1903. The college I went to was founded in 1352. The city my wife grew up in was occupied by the Romans sometime between 70 and 80 AD.
- alexkus 13y ago> The difference between America and England is that the Americans think 100 years is a long time, whereas the English think 100 miles is a long way. Having lived in both countries I think that's a good way of thinking about it (for the average person.) (Obviously individuals will differ; 100 miles is a half day cycle ride for me so I don't think of it as that long a way.)
- batbomb 13y agoMaybe it's a little different because I grew up in New Mexico next to the Navajo reservation, right smack in the middle of tons of pueblos, but you have a very euro-centric view of the world if you think everybody in America thinks 100 years ago was a long time ago. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoma_Pueblo http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoma_Pueblo
- ColinWright 13y agoNor does everybody in England think 100 miles is a long way. It's possible to talk about majority views and refer to 90% of people without ignoring and trivialising the knowledge and experience of the minority. Are you suggesting that the majority of people in America think 100 years is a comparatively short time span? Probably not. I freely acknowledge and agree that there are Americans who think 100 years is a short time, and Englanders who think 100 miles is a short distance.
- Frozenlock 13y agoArticle is behind a paywall.
- tobykier 13y agoGod forbid people get paid for their work
- Frozenlock 13y agoI wouldn't care if it wasn't an article posted on HN. IMO when someone posts an article that's behind a paywall, he should at least put something like [paywall] in the title.
- MarcusVorenus 13y agoI believe The Economist gives you 3 articles for free per week, so it's not paywalled for everyone.
- nhebb 13y agoFor cookie counter paywalls, I've found the easiest workaround is to right-click on the link and open in a new private window.
- _s 13y agoI can access it fine - here's a pastebin either way: http://pastebin.com/2d922RbR http://pastebin.com/2d922RbR
- junto 13y agoThere are lots of secret MOD tunnels as well. Some of them run out of London across the country with rail tracks to nuclear bunkers that were to be used when nuclear war broke out. To put the scale of it in perspective, one if the tunnels runs to a bunker in Wales south of Aberystwyth.
- jdsnape 13y agoDo you have a source for that last example? Seems like it would be a bit difficult to keep a tunnel of that scale secret.
- Alphasite_ 13y agoIt's not really a a secret if he knows about it.
- alexkus 13y agoIt doesn't exist. There is a tunnel in Aber that was used to store valuables (Crown jewels, etc) during WWII, but it's certainly not a tunnel all the way from London. Source: http://www.everythingaberystwyth.co.uk/aberystwyth-fact-of-the-week-5/ http://www.everythingaberystwyth.co.uk/aberystwyth-fact-of-t...
- junto 13y agoI was dubious too, but I trust the source of that information. The bunker in question isn't on any of the lists you'll find on the Internet. The bunker is also very well hidden. I can't find the entrance on Google Maps, but I'm very sure of the location within a few kms.
- gushie 13y agoIt does exist. I heard from another source that they filmed the Apollo Moon Landings inside it...
- ra 13y agoLondon to Aberystwyth is about 380km. I seriously doubt there's a tunnel.
- CraigJPerry 13y agoThe post office tunnels http://www.silentuk.com/?p=2792 http://www.silentuk.com/?p=2792 just seems crazy to abandon these recently. Use of these must be worth a fortune given where they run.
- michaelt 13y agoThings like this can end up like steam trains and classic cars - very nice, certainly wouldn't want to see them abandoned or destroyed, but expensive to maintain due to the poor availability of spare parts or experienced workers.
- VLM 13y agoNobody else caught on to the "its booming economy provided the financing." bit? To say a tunnel is capital intensive is an understatement. So you need rule of law, stable and very large financial markets, relatively low corruption. In comparison, there are other large cities built on good tunneling dirt that are perfectly unsuitable for a tunneling project for purely human reasons. Manhattan is no picnic to dig a tunnel thru, but finances being what they are, it also looks like swiss cheese.
- Theodores 13y agoIn London the easy bits of the 'swiss cheese' were tunnelled through first. Hence North London where the easy clay is in greater abundance has the earlier and more extensive tube trains (and more expensive house prices). South of the river, e.g. to Brixton, took a lot longer to arrive and the tunnel work was a lot harder with former rivers and earth more substantial than clay to get through. So yes, anything is possible given money, however, geology still gets in the way.
- dredmorbius 13y agoExcellent point. I've been looking at economics as a discipline, and what it does and doesn't take into account. Three of those factors are stability (which allows complex and advanced concepts to flourish, including advanced infrastructure), risk (and who bears it), and power relationships (again, who has power over whom). Another example would be religious catacombs -- underground structures with religious significance, notably in Rome, Paris, London, and elsewhere. Again, the Church (large, stable, wealthy) established these. Another aspect of London's underground infrastructure is its sewerage system, constructed in the 1850s, and one of the modern world's first sanitation systems. It was constructed in the face of a massive cholera epidemic (imported from India) which was claiming millions of lives throughout Europe and tens of thousands in England, and exhibiting a mortality rate of 10-20%, often killing within 12 hours. The mechanism (oral ingestion, gut development, fecal-oral transmission) had just been posited and demonstrated by John Snow and his famous map of cases identifying the Broad Street pump, contaminated by a nearby (3 foot distant) septic tank which was leaking into it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system There are many histories of this, one of the better ones I've encountered is James Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed", episode 7, "What the Doctor Ordered". The entire programme covers the emergence of the modern medical and public health system. The portion specific to the cholera epidemic and the infrastructure effects starts at 19 minutes in: http://fixyt.com/watch?v=wM2UZ26b1EQ http://fixyt.com/watch?v=wM2UZ26b1EQ The fascinating part is that much of what's now considered to be "British nature" (cricket, stiff upper lip, jolly good) emerged as a consequence of this epidemic as well.
- leke 13y agoOne of the Sherlock Holmes episodes claimed he knew of a unknown Roman temple chamber hidden in one of the lost tunnels. His explanation cited pretty much everything in this article. I wonder if there is any truth to that.
- dredmorbius 13y agoSimilar: NYC is absolutely riddled with tunnels and underground infrastructure: subways, power, sewage, and as I recall, deepest of all the projects which transport Catskills water into the city. I seem to recall a graphic which showed these tunnels at various depths, but have been unable to find it via numerous searches. There is a pretty cool spread at Gizmodo showing the East Side Access project for the LIRR though. The scale of this is simply staggering: http://gizmodo.com/5985618/incredible-images-of-the-new-massive-tunnels-hollowing-new-york-city http://gizmodo.com/5985618/incredible-images-of-the-new-mass...
- hundchenkatze 13y agoI believe this maybe the image you're referring to. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/docs/nymain.html http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/docs/nymain....
- dredmorbius 13y agoIt is. You win teh Intarnets. Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4365970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4365970