SAFETY OF RAILWAY TUNNELS IN GREECE

The railway is moving rapidly toward a modern service transportation industry. High Speed Railway (HSR) systems are already operating in various countries. In Greece the expansion and modernisation of the railways for speeds up to 250 km/h is carried out through the Investment program of the Greek Railways and includes the design and construction of several tunnels with lengths up to 23 kilometres. Planning and designing railway tunnels with an explicit reference to safety issues is becoming of utmost importance since the combination of high-speed, mixed goods-passenger traffic and significant length have sensitively modified the inherent tunnel safety. The scope of this contribution is to illustrate results from the safety studies performed for the most significant tunnels of the line between Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece. First the compatibility with similar projects in Europe is discussed. Then the risk to passengers during operation is computed by considering characteristic initiating events such as derailment, collision and fire. The obtained risk values are discussed with respect to their acceptability and a cost-effective package of safety measures is proposed. (A) For the covering abstract see ITRD E121600.