Japan is world-renowned when it comes to construction projects. It holds records for the world's longest tunnel (the Seikan tunnel between Honshu and Hokkaido), the world's longest suspension bridge (the Akashi-Kaikyo bridge between Kobe and Awaji island) and from 2025 it will have the world's longest Maglev train track between Tokyo and Nagoy, which will see people travelling at over 500kmph!
Today, I found a picture explaining what's going on beneath the construction site near our house. They've been working on it for months, but nothing seems to have been built. I thought it was a bit strange - but now all is clear!
They're building some kind of air-exchange plant that will help keep the Tokyo subway tubes cool and clean. To do this, they're digging a huge hole in the ground which will go down over 70 metres.
Because there's a river nearby, they have to pump high-pressure air into the hole to keep the water out, and the workers all have to go through an air-lock to enter the site.
But the thing I love is the diggers - check them out! There's 7 of them, suspended from the ceiling on little tracks!
But can you imagine being the operator of one of those? Working way underground in a high pressure chamber with tonnes of concrete above you? I'm not sure I'd like to do that.
Seeing these kinds of projects makes me think that in Japan, anything is possible.
Mind you, Things don't always go to plan - Kansai International Airport which was built on an artificial island in the sea is sinking!
Do you have any crazy construction projects where you live?
CEO MIrai Inc
http://www.dannychoo.com/profile/eng/
Thats just incredible! They should publish photos too. Done a search but could not find anything interesting.
Podcaster and tech-otaku
http://www.tamegoeswild.com
The official name for the project is 中央環状品川線中目黒換気所下部工事 desu. According to a *really* exciting PDF published by Tokyo Metro, construction goes on 24 hours a day, and it's due for completion in March 2011. Apparently it's costing 48億5,940万円 - i.e. a lot.
The other nearby construction project that interests the construction-otaku in me is the new tunnel from Daikanyama to Shibuya - the Toyoko line will connect with the relatively new Fukutoshinsen subway. The tunnel is actually directly under the existing track, and they say that when it comes time to join the two tracks it'll be done in a single night, no downtime at all.
That made me smile, when I thought how long it takes what was British Rail to do anything!
Mad scientist
This makes me think of planning and JR. They used to use puffers and hooks like in the UK. They decided to use the American couplers instead (stronger, easier/faster to use, behaves better in curves, etc...) but how do you replace all couplers in the country without downtime? Well they planned ahead, hired a whole lot of extra workers and then at a certain time they all started replacing couplers. All repairshops worked 24 hours a day and they were done in just 3 days. Amazingly during that time the rail operation (both passengers and freight) operated normally due to careful planning. Maybe it was one type of couplers on the train in the morning and the other type in the evening when you commuted to work, but it could still be the very same train.
I don't know of any other railroad who attempted a quick replacement like this and I'm somewhat sure that no big railroad even considered doing it overnight like this. I would really like to know more about how they manage to get this working, but I have failed to find prober information about it. If anybody has a source then I would be happy ^^
university film student | ecchikid | the Archivist
http://www.vimeo.com/longhim
Here, they'd probably just go for the downtime. Cheaper, and far less effort required.
Of course, this has to be taken in the context of the relative traffic/passenger load each system handles. The Toronto subway system isn't remotely as busy as Japan's.
Mad scientist
Actually I think it might not be that expensive to do without downtime. You have to plan ahead and order all the couplers. You just order way too many on purpose and leave the leftovers at the repairshop as spare parts. You will use all of them eventually and you will not run out of couplers in the process even if one breaks while attaching it.
Hiring more people will cost you, but it's not much more expensive to have 25 people working one week and it is to have 11 people working for two weeks on a specific task. Sure using more people can cause bottlenecks in the repairshop and each worker will be less efficient, but not much. Japan also manage to do this decades ago where workers were cheap compared to the price of say the couplers. It's like Africa is today: you just hire more workers instead of buying a machine to do the job because the worker payment is really low compared to the price of machinery.
What remains is the planning problem. Sure this is an issue, but you can actually spend quite a deal on planning when you avoid costs like penalty for not moving freight according to contract, loss of passenger income, hiring busses and stuff like that.
A little sidenote: railroad repairshops are actually operational 24 hours a day. Imagine a locomotive, which runs 21 hours a day (this actually happens) and something breaks during the day. It will have to be fixed before it leaves the next day. The railroad then have a choice: either fix it during the night or finding a solution to being one locomotive short the next morning. The price of missing a locomotive and hiring one from the neighbour railroad (or whatever they do) is so high that the paycheck for having crew working at night seems like a good idea.
Sadly administration today seems horribly inefficient and fails to find cost effective solutions. A good example is one Danny mentioned earlier: roadworks, which goes on forever (in UK, not Japan). Here a few months ago they had a roadwork for a few months and they worked like one day a week. Sometimes they didn't even show up during a whole week. Yet they had a small excavator, a staffroom on wheels and that sort of stuff standing there all the time. If they need to work 10 days to finish a job, then use those 10 days and move on to the next place where they spend 10 days. Now where they work on both sites at the same time they need machinery to be present at both locations, which seems like a waste of machinery and money. It's tax money so whoever is planning this will not gain a personal financial bonus for cutting expenses so it seems like they just don't care.
JR was a state railroad company until 198x where it was sold as several companies because it had the same issue. Poor leadership made the company a black hole for tax money and ever increasing ticket prices. The private companies changed their structure into something way more efficient and the result is better train service at a much lower cost. I read that the union claims that JR east started by firing 200.000 people. If they could fire that many without causing an impact for the passengers, then there is something wrong by hiring all those people in the first place and.... what did they do when they were at work? ^^
Mechanical Engineering student
http://sabekujikaneda.multiply.com/
LOL that's nothing! Try mining precious minerals thousands of meters under the ground, tolerating heat and exhaustion. Unlike this building which will be finished soon, miners will have to work FOREVAH (or until they exhausted all the minerals or they die, whichever comes first)! O_o
I hear that they're planning to make another artificial island next to the old one to build a new airport on it. Not sure if that's true though.
Podcaster and tech-otaku
http://www.tamegoeswild.com
Good point re. minors. I bet they don't have groovy diggers hanging from the ceiling either.
If there was a plan for a second kansai airport I reckon it'll be scrapped by the new government - they've frozen a lot of construction projects already.
Mad scientist
This is another solution to the water. I have seen a project where due to underground water, the construction guys sat up huge freezers and lowered the ground temperature to below 0°C. They could then dig in the ice filled dirt and the ice kept everything together and prevented caveins. Amazingly they managed to do this without damaging the buildings on top of their digging. I think the air and ground should be somewhat cold to start with for this to work or you might need a powerplant just to keep the freezer going.
As for miners... the deepest mine has reached it's limit. They can't go deeper even though there are more to mine. The reason is that once you go deep enough the ground gets hotter as you go deeper and this deep mine is around 60°C at the bottom O_O
Sentai Ranger
http://morganlamia.blogspot.com/
That's all kinds of awesome o.o Right under your nose... well, feet... the whole time too.
Podcaster and tech-otaku
http://www.tamegoeswild.com
ne. I've been trying to figure it out for ages - the explanation notice is pretty new.
Mad scientist
The idea about keeping water out of your construction site by making a higher pressure is not a new one. When the Brooklyn Bridge were built, they did the same thing when building the pylons.
Here is how it worked:
First they built a giant wooden box, which they turned upside down. It were floating in the river. They then built the pylon on top of it (with bricks) and as it gained size, the weight pushed the wooden box into the water. Eventually it hit the bottom. and then they filled it with air and sent people down using airlocks. Those people then digged out the mud and the workers on the top continued to build the pylon and the weight slowly pushed the wooden box into the bottom of the river. Once they reached the bedrock they filled the box with concrete and that's so stable that's it's still standing today and can remain standing forever (well almost). Sadly one of the pylons ended up on top of a crack in the bedrock, which is filled with sand. However eventually they decided that the sand was hard enough to use as foundation. The main problem was that as they went down, the pressure had to increase and they had reached a limit where people got permanently and seriously ill from the pressure.
I think Roebling (the engineer behind the bridge) were the one to invent the idea of using high air pressure to avoid water and this bridge were the first one to actually use it. To get the date strait, the construction started in 1870, but it wasn't opened until 1883.
I like this idea. It means that you will not have to pump out water at all and you don't have to make everything completely airtight. If you have leaks, then you just add more air to compensate ^^
Podcaster and tech-otaku
http://www.tamegoeswild.com
I appreciate the idea's not new, although until today I didn't know about it - Caisson engineering I think it's called.
I hope they got paid danger money on that bridge project!
Mad scientist
Basically the people under ground were paid for 12 hours a day and with a higher than average payment for each hour. As the pressure increased a doctor gave an estimate on how long a person could deal with the pressure and eventually it went down to just 4 hours. They still got paid for 12 hours though.
Roebling himself died when a ferry "accidently" crashed into the pier he was standing on when he was preparing for the bridge. His son then took over (also a Roebling), but he got injured by the air pressure and ended up in a wheelchair. His wife then worked hard on finishing the bridge, which I think was quite unusual of a woman at that time. As you can see it wasn't just the working class, who lived a dangerous life in the past.
pervert
i'm still waiting for the day that they build a real moving macross unit
Metallurgist
http://www.projectharuhi.net
the sheer expensive involved is mind boggling. then there is the continued costs of keeping all that water out...
Mad scientist
The running costs of keeping water out might be way cheaper than you imagine. Think of the running costs of keeping water out of a good conditioned ship ^^
Student
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dramacd/
This technology must be weaponized.
Full-time geek/Part-time student/Part-time musician
http://randomgeekness.livejournal.com/
Japan is the future of this world!!! LOL!.
Student
lol! when i looked at the first picture, i thought they were trying to make a retractable building that can retract into the ground if something happens..
Graduating University Student/Full Time Otaku
Evangelion!!!
Mad scientist
World Trade Centre defence. Some engineers actually had the assignment to secure WTC against being hit by any manmade flying object and they did make it durable enough to handle the impact. They just forgot about exploding/burning fueltanks >_<
IT Business Analyst + Test Analyst + Undergrad Uni Student
http://www.crepuscular.asia
I just hope it doesnt fumble like this... i remember it causes a lot of traffic chaos that my lecturer had to take a day off
http://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/138313/lane-cove-tunnel-building-collapse.html
Mad scientist
Worst one was the one in Germany. They were making a subway tunnel and somehow they made 3 buildings collapse (more or less). The totally destroyed one was the historical archive with the original writings about all sorts of stuff in Germany. In a way you can say that Germany is now a country without a past O_O
The really big mystery is how the tunnel project could get complains about 100+ buildings, which started to crack and they just moved on. I think you had to watch the German media to keep track of what happened after the buildings collapsed, so if anybody can tell us, then it would be good. I suspect they stopped digging that tunnel, at least until they figured out another way to do it. The way I understand the issue is that they drained the tunnel for water. Once the tunnel was dry, then water from the ground went into the tunnel and it was drained again. Eventually the ground around the tunnel lost so much water that became unstable.
http://otakuposts.blogspot.com/
engineers everywhere never fail to amaze the mind. this is very interesting.