Nobody 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.
In 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.
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.
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:
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.
The Church had almost nothing to do with the catacombs in Paris (I don't know about the others, but IIRC in Rome it's also more complicated since they were created at a time where the Church had almost no political power and not very much wealth... but I could be mistaken for Rome). The Parisian "catacombs" were created in preexisting tunnels. And actually weren't catacombs at all, because people never wanted to be buried there, it's not a necropolis. The catacombs were created because the monarchy in France was pissed with the old Innocent Cemetery which was in the very center of Paris, just north of the City Island and was spreading diseases, wasting real estate and serving as a harbor to criminals etc. Also the graveyard was literally overflowing (yep, literally, basement walls in houses nearby had started to crumble under the pressure of the accumulated bones). So by a royal edict of 1785 the bones in the Innocent Cemetery where moved to an underground ossuary, that became known as the Catacombs of Paris. The Church only did the praying and rituals allowing for the transfer of the dead.
But the tunnels where actually the old Parisian quarries.. And people dug those for centuries, at times of war and peace, with rules or without. It was everything but based on a large, stable and wealthy institution. Damn, even during the Revolution people still worked in those tunnels. And miners who worked in the 16th and 17th century were pretty much free workers who lived by selling building material that they mined underground.
There's power and wealth, and there's stability, of purpose and project if not of institutions (taking your point on Paris under advisement). Simply existing for a long time (and having a long-term vision) will get you some of the way there. What modern times offers is the ability to complete massive undertakings quickly by devoting vast resources to them all at once. What ancient times had was fewer resources but often a much, much longer time horizon. What current projects are undertaken with even a 10-20 year time horizon, let alone several centuries?
Things 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.
There 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.
I 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.
Despite common assurances otherwise, this is possibly the case. It's not beyond engineering technology of the era.
When people purchased bunkers post-cold-war, they were confronted with "permanent sealed" doors that cannot be opened within the bunkers. These are welded shut and the ports on the door filled with concrete so that it filled whatever was behind. You can go and see these at Kelvedon Hatch in Essex and could previously see these at Ash Radar Station in Kent (before thebunker.net bought it). Each of these doors is closest to the "London side" of things. When they were built, people spoke of the ground vibrating for months at a time in various places along the routes apparently as well (although I can't find a source for that -it might be well just be rumor).
They would be very small tunnels (pedestrian/small vehicle) sort of like cheesy James Bond bad guy monorail sized outfits but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.
Those who worked on them though are sworn to secrecy or are dead so we'll probably never know. That is until someone has the balls to fight their way through the welded and filled doors which would take weeks and be extortionately expensive due to the diamond belt saws needed I've been assured.
Since someone reading this might have similar interests, I have a question. I have recently seen a document, which I think must have been part of the Snowden leak, but I'm struggling to find it again. It s a map of all of the listening points from the Tempora program. They were all common first names, differently sized boxes on the map.
If anyone knows what I'm talking about then I'd love a copy.
I would start digging a few meters outside of those doors. If you use ground radar or the like, it should not be too hard to find such a tunnel even 20 or 50 meters from the bunker.
Similar: 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:
One 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.
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.
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.
Maybe 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.
Nor 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.
Just 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
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.
Well, 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.
Don't forget that things aren't the same everywhere. The land in Alaska and New York is rising pretty fast, geologically speaking, since the weight of glaciers came off. Meanwhile New Orleans is sinking. Chicago took matters into their own hands and raised street level an entire floor to combat flooding. We still have ancient caves at ground level in New York, but I'm sure stuff buried under a city survives better.
"raised street level an entire floor to combat flooding" - yup, that's pretty much the same technique by which "the ancient cities are rising." Except that Chicago was lifted up, whereas the old cities were only readjusted - essentially, ground level becomes the first basement, entrance is now on what used to be second floor. This process could be repeated, giving rise to old ground-level floors becoming the third basement or similar. Case in point: Prague's Old Town, founded at riverside, was gradually raised by up to 30 feet (which has unexpected consequences, and actually worsens the flooding problems it was always expected to solve).
> Are ancient cities actually getting higher in altitude as old ruins get covered up?
I recently watched a TV show from a relatively old series about underground cities where they showed the underground of Istanbul. Very interesting, but I can't remember the name of the show.
"The course of the old racetrack has been indicated with paving, although the actual track is some 2 m (6.6 ft) below the present surface. The surviving monuments of the Spina (the middle barrier of the racecourse), the two obelisks and the Serpentine Column, now sit in holes in a landscaped garden."
That 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...
That happened quite recently in London for the new CrossRail track: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23609994. Not that I agree that the city is too old, or that this is a major problem; from the sounds of it, the CrossRail planners were well aware they'd run into interesting archeological finds, so allotted resources to deal with it.
To 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.
And 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.
The first underground lines were in 1863. That's the mid 19th century. The first deep level train (what's actually the Tube) was the City & South London Railway, opened in 1890 (late 19th century). Check yo fax.
> opened in 1890 (late 19th century). Check yo fax.
HN, of all communities, should be familiar with off-by-one errors. My apologies for the confusion; you are right, I was referring to the late 19th and early 20th century.
Nope - the newest lines (Victoria, Jubilee) are all smaller diameter trains. The larger, squarer cut+covers (District, Circle, Metropolitan etc) are generally older, because you can't cut a trench across London for a new Tube line any more.
It's still not hard to stand on any of the trains as long as you're not right beside the door on a Tube (unless you're extremely unusually tall, but the odds are well against that).
There 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.
Roughly 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.
London 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.
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.