Carving into the Carmel

The Carmel Tunnels have just opened after three years of work, offering drivers a quick and efficient way through Haifa.

By RON FRIEDMAN
carmel tunnels_521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
carmel tunnels_521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Unfortunately for the builders and operators of the Carmel Tunnels, the celebrations surrounding the opening of the much anticipated landmark infrastructure project in Haifa were short-lived. Two days after the grand opening and ribbon-cutting by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and a day after the tunnels were formally opened to traffic, the biggest forest fire in Israel’s history erupted on the mountain and the name “Carmel” became synonymous with destruction and tragedy instead of progress and development.
Fortunately, however, the tunnels weren’t damaged by the fire that took out thousands of acres of woodlands and killed more than 40 people, and will be there long after the razed forest returns to its original green state. If anything, with hundreds of emergency and military vehicles using the newly opened route to rush from one side of the mountain to the other in their efforts to ward off the flames, the fire proved the necessity of having a quick and efficient route across the city.
In contrast to the country’s outdated and under-funded Fire Service, the Carmel Tunnels are a symbol of foresight and modernity. Paid for and built by private companies, the tunnels were Israel’s first experience with Private Public Partnership, a system that has since been adopted, with mixed success, in nearly all major infrastructure projects.
The partnership is based on a Build Operate Transfer agreement between the state and the projects’ owners, Ashtrom and Shikun U’Binui. The owners’ joint company, Carmelton, won the tender to build the project in 1997 and was given license to operate it as a toll road for 31 years before turning it over to the state.
THE IDEA of digging a tunnel under Mount Carmel has been around for nearly 100 years. During the British Mandate period, colonial architects planned to build the tunnel to connect the port to the western coast. The idea resurfaced in the 1980s, but was dropped. It was finally adopted by Haifa mayor Amram Mitzna, who started promoting it aggressively in the national planning bodies in the mid-1990s.
The Finance and Transportation ministries issued the tender in 1997, and later that year Carmelton won the bid pledging NIS 266 million in royalties to the treasury.
After nearly a decade of delays caused by bureaucratic obstacles, residents’ objections, lawsuits, financing difficulties and change of ownership, the digging finally began in 2007.
At around that time Chaim Barak joined the project as head of the production team. Barak, who before that was involved in large construction projects, including the construction of the new Defense Ministry building in the Tel Aviv Kirya, was brought in for his ability to administer and supervise large and complex projects.
“In the beginning of 2007, the company was just completing the approval stage of the project’s financing,” Barak said. “We had to find an international company with experience in underground works to dig the actual tunnels and local companies to build the series of bridges and ramps connecting them to the rest of the city.”
The Carmel Tunnels are the longest in Israel. The project is made up of four dual-lane tunnels, two stretching from the end of Highway 2, at the entrance to Haifa, to the Ruppin junction, each measuring 3.20 kilometers; and two stretching from Ruppin to the Checkpost at the other side of the mountain, measuring 1.65 km.
In addition, there are seven bridges at the Ruppin junction connecting the tunnels to the city overhead.
“From the beginning, it was clear that if the tunnels ran directly from side to side, it wouldn’t be economical. We estimate that two-thirds of the users will use only one of the two sections,” said Barak.
Six international companies bid on the tender to dig the tunnels – five European companies and a Chinese company. The minimum requirement was for the company to have experience at building at least 11 km. of tunnels. The China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation won the tender, and in January 2007 it brought 550 workers to commence the work.
“The digging was done by a method called Drill and Blast,” said Barak. “Though it is considered old-fashioned – today most tunneling projects are done by huge boring machines – it was the cheapest and most efficient way to go ahead in this case.”
Barak explained that the relatively short length of the tunnels didn’t justify importing eight boring machines, each costing NIS 40 million and taking three months to assemble.
The Drill and Blast method works by drilling 120 long, narrow holes into the rock wall at a depth and location determined by engineers. The holes are then filled with explosives and a timed explosion breaks apart the rock. After the debris is removed, a new rock wall is revealed.
AFTER BLASTING and removal of the rock, the walls of the tunnel are reinforced with steel and concrete. Each tunnel has to be 10 meters wide and six meters high in its final form, after all the piping is installed and the road laid.
“The Chinese workers worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week for nearly three years. Though their method was basic, it was highly effective. And after an initial learning period, it resulted in a pace of more than four meters a day on six different digging points,” said Barak. “Technology isn’t necessarily always the best solution.”
For those three years, the workers lived in quarters adjacent to each of the three work sites. Each building had a kitchen – which included a huge wok fit for a regiment, where they cooked their own food – residential quarters, offices and communal areas.
“The Chinese workers also insisted on making their own cement. Each work site had its own small cement factory,” said Barak.
The workers lived and worked in a closed community, without joining in the life of the city. Working one of three eight-hour shifts every day, often on weekends too, their lives consisted of hard work and sleep. There was no time for entertainment aside from maybe a short walk to the falafel stand across the road.
Barak said that throughout the whole project he saw only two or three Chinese women on the site.
Two and a half million tons of rock were removed from the ground in the course of digging. According to Zvika Shdema, one of the engineers who worked on the project, much of the rock was transferred to the sea to use for a new dock at Haifa Port. The rest was used to support the bridges and ramps in the central valley.
While the tunnel boring method may have been oldfashioned, the next stage of development was anything but. The tunnel’s internal design features state-of-the-art technologies that match any in existence across the world.
During a guided tour of the tunnels, days before the project’s completion, project spokesman Avi Shmul pointed out some of their special features:
“It begins with the road itself, which is made of special sound-absorbing asphalt. Though the tunnels range from a depth of 50 to 250m. below ground level and, for the most part, passage is not heard or felt above ground, out of concern for the users as well as the neighbors, we ordered the special asphalt, which significantly reduces the noise levels in and around the project,” said Shmul.
As we entered the tunnels, Shmul pointed out the lighting overhead and explained that the lighting was designed to let drivers’ eyes get used to the light levels inside.
“The lighting was designed so that during the daytime the lights will be bright enough for drivers not to have to adjust to a darker environment. At night, they will be bright enough to see by, but not too bright so that drivers will be blinded by it, even momentarily.
“As you drive through the tunnels, the lighting shifts to ideal levels without the driver ever noticing any difference.”
The speed limit inside the tunnels is 80 kph – reasonable considering the relatively straight and level track and high quality of the driving surface – but Shmul said that drivers tended to slow down when driving in a tunnel, and that the average anticipated speed was 70 kph.
Shmul noted the hundreds of motion sensors spread out throughout the tunnels that monitor movement, and explained that the sensors can detect things like speed, obstructions in the road, pedestrians who have entered the tunnel, or vehicles moving in the wrong direction – and alert the control room to the problem.
The tunnels are also equipped with hundreds of cameras covering every section, broadcasting the images to a central control room.
Driving through, you can see that safety was a chief concern for the tunnels’ designers. At every roughly 100 meters is a lay-by station, where drivers can pull over to the side. Each one of these stations has a phone booth with a direct line to the control center, a fire hose and other emergency equipment.
Shmul said that the phone booths are hermetically sealed and could provide protection for people in case of a fire.
Though traffic in each tunnel is one way only and drivers are unable to cross from one to the other, the tunnels’ designers had to be prepared for emergency situations. Every 450 meters throughout the tunnels there are portals which open in case of emergency, revealing vehicle passageways between tunnels. These passageways feature an abundance of safety equipment, providing all the necessary infrastructure for battling a fire inside a tunnel.
“A fire truck can hook up to power and water supplies, they have direct communication to the control room. There are cameras that let people in the control room see what they are doing and a public announcement system which allows the control room to give directions to the people in the tunnel,” said Shmul.
“The tunnels even feature air circulation control systems that allow smoke or gases to be sucked out of one tunnel and released to the other. That’s important in case of a fire when you want to protect people from smoke or poisonous fumes.”
The control room itself looks like something you’d expect to see in a television studio or a war room. It is a big 10 x 20-meter room with flatscreen monitors covering an entire wall, and a large table with additional screens providing room for half a dozen people dominating the center. The screens on the wall display dozens of images captured by the cameras spread out throughout the tunnels, and can call any image onto the central screen.
Some cameras can also be controlled by the operators in the control room, allowing for zooming in on any given section in case of an incident. The screens on the table display information collected by the sensors and provide data about things like temperature, speed and traffic volume.
“We receive all the information concerning the tunnels in real time, immediately, to the control room,” said a control supervisor. “The room is manned 24/7, and if we spot anything out of the ordinary, we can take control of the situation on the spot by sending out a patrol vehicle or contacting the users through the public address system.”
Next to the control room is a boardroom, which doubles as an emergency situation room. In case of emergency, like a fire or serious accident in the tunnels, the curtains are pulled aside, allowing occupants to see everything taking place in the control room.
In the weeks before the opening of the tunnels, the operating company, along with police, firefighters and Magen David Adom representatives, underwent a series of drills and exercises familiarizing them with the equipment and preparing them for a range of disaster scenarios.
“Our control room also has a direct link to the main Haifa fire station. The firefighters can see what’s happening even before they arrive on the scene,” said Shmul. “Every firefighter in the region has participated in at least one drill in the tunnels, so they should all be familiar with the features and capabilities of the system.”
EVEN DRIVERS who never catch a glimpse of the control room can get a taste of the advanced technology put to use in the tunnels. The equipment used to collect tolls is also the first of its kind in Israel and based on state-ofthe- art image recognition technology.
Developed by Israeli company, Hi-Tech Solutions, the system can point a camera, connected to a computer, at a vehicle’s license plate and translate the number into text.
HTS’s equipment is mounted above the 24 toll routes at the entrances to the tunnels, where they capture images of the license plates of all the vehicles that pass through and send the translated data to the operating company for billing purposes.
The system can translate any type of license plate, regardless of color, be it civilian black on yellow, military white on black, or diplomatic black on white.
The system allows for rapid entrance into the tunnels by subscribers and immediate recognition of vehicles passing from one tunnel to the next.
Passage through the tunnels costs NIS 5.70 per vehicle, per direction. Payment will be collected either in toll booths at the entrance to the tunnel, or automatically by license plate recognition. Drivers who hold subscriptions for Highway 6 do not have to acquire a separate subscription for the tunnel. An agreement between the two companies enables direct billing through Highway 6’s operating company.
All in all, the owners of the tunnels invested an estimated NIS 1.25 billion in their construction, an amount they estimate they will be able to earn back within the first dozen years of operation.
Now that the tunnels are complete and running, control of the project has shifted from Barak and his team to the operator, Netivei Hacarmel. It is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the tunnels until 2041, when the project will be handed over to the state.
However, engineer Shdema said that the construction team’s work is not yet done.
“We are still responsible for completing work on the natural rehabilitation of the project’s surroundings,” he said.
Part of the agreement between Carmelton and the city was that the company would restore the foliage around the project and return the project’s surroundings as much as possible to their natural state.
“Actually, we did even better. We really cleaned up,” said Shdema. “While the main east and west entrances were bare mountain wall and all we had to do was plant a few trees to add some green to the concrete, the central valley was a serious project.
“For years it had been used as an illegal dumping point for construction material and debris and was so full of garbage that it was in anything but a natural state. We removed all that and planted trees and shrubs in its place.
“In a few years, once the plants have grown, you won’t be able to tell that this site was once a dumping-ground, or that hundreds of Chinese laborers once used this valley as their residence.
“By then, we will also have removed all the irrigation system that helped them on their way so that the mountain will be ‘all natural.’”
Shmul noted that the company even helped bring back a variety of plant from the verge of extinction.
“We worked with an expert from Moshav Kerem Maharal, who was able to take a single bulb of Madonna lily – which was once bountiful in this area, but was picked to near-extinction – and create thousands of little bulbs that will eventually grow into fully blown plants. These were planted all across the project, and next year we should see thousands of beautiful white flowers spread out across the mountain.”
AS PART of the project, the company also rehabilitated a river flowing through the city and created the infrastructure for a large new urban park in the middle of Haifa.
However, as Shmul himself conceded, the project wasn’t all flowers and ribbon-cutting. Throughout the years of construction, it had its fair share of setbacks and problems, including a two-month strike by the Chinese workers and hundreds of complaints from neighbors and residents.
“Some of the residents were against the project to begin with. Businesspeople were concerned over income losses due to reduced traffic in the city’s downtown commercial hubs. Neighbors complained about the noise and the air pollution caused by the blasting and construction,” said Shmul. “Some people have filed for damages for cracks in their buildings they say were caused by the explosions.
“We certainly tried our best to keep damage down to a minimum, and throughout the entire construction phase we were monitored by local and national authorities to make sure we kept to regulations concerning air and noise pollution; but a project of this magnitude is bound to elicit some criticism.
“We only hope we were able to provide solutions to those suffering from the works – for example, we called up residents before every explosion – and hope that the final product will justify all the difficulties.”
The final product and the project’s bottom line is that people who want to cross the city can now do so in a matter of six to eight minutes instead of the 45 minutes it once took.
“The tunnels offer their users a significant reduction in travel time for getting across the city. Instead of going through 27 traffic lights on the surface roads, they can now cross the city, uninterrupted, 200 meters under the surface,” said Barak.
The tunnels that proved their worth in aiding the fire and rescue services during the course of the Carmel forest fire will now aid regular citizens in their daily movements across Haifa. It can only be hoped that the efficiency displayed in getting the Carmel Tunnels constructed will be emulated in Israel’s other long-awaited major infrastructure projects.