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LHASA, April 26 (Xinhua) -- The world's highest highway tunnel was open to traffic on Friday at an altitude of over 4,750 meters above sea level in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. The two-way tunnel is over 5.7 km long, which is a part of the 400-km highway linking the regional capital of Lhasa with Nyingchi in the southeast of Tibet. Construction of the tunnel started in 2015 on the 5,018-meter-high Mila Mountain, and it was completed on Monday, helping shorten the 18-km distance over the mountain to 5.7 km. Gong Bin, project manager of Mila Mountain Tunnel of the...

A subsea tunnel across the Strait of Belle Isle is back in conversation once again after a report was tabled this month in Ottawa. The federal government’s standing committee on transport, infrastructure, and communities is now calling on the federal government to work with the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec, as well, as the private sector, to build a fixed link across the Strait of Belle Isle and complete Route 138 along the Quebec Lower North Shore. The tunnel would link Point Amour in Labrador to Yankee Point on the Great Northern Peninsula in Newfoundland. The project would...

SEATTLE -- The double-deck Alaskan Way Viaduct spells disaster in the event of a massive earthquake in Seattle. It's a warning that played out in real life in Oakland, Calif., 30 years ago. The Cyprus Street Viaduct Collapse killed 42 people during the Loma Prieta Earthquake. The stark similarities between that and our own viaduct in Seattle had experts sounding the alarm back then. Then in 2001, the Nisqually Earthquake hit at a 6.8 magnitude. "In 2001, during the Nisqually quake, the Alaskan Way Viaduct was damaged on the north end of the Alaskan Way Viaduct," said tunnel expert Red...

A public interest advocacy group has identified the country’s “most wasteful and pointless” transportation projects, which are costing taxpayers $25 billion. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) cites among “the biggest boondoggles” a $2.2 billion widening of Interstate 81 in Virginia, a $7 billion interstate project in Houston and a $802 million “Connecting Miami” redesign of city highways. According to PIRG, widening highways to reduce gridlock fails for several reasons. Multiple studies show that more road space over time leads to further congestion because of a phenomenon called “induced demand.” “We’re stuck in a car-centric rut in the United...

Opposition to tolling the future Interstate 10 Mobile River Bridge and the Wallace Tunnel dominated the public comments during Tuesday’s hearing into the massive $2.1 billion project. From local politicians to business owners, the message to the Alabama Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration was clear: A $3 to $6 toll will place enormous burdens on drivers and workers in Mobile and Baldwin counties, and it won’t fly with the rest of the public either. “It’s a huge expense,” said Roger Nelson of Daphne, who commutes daily to work to downtown Mobile. “It will be passed on.” Said...

From Wikipedia: Robert Hanssen sold thousands of classified documents to the KGB which detailed U.S. strategies in the event of nuclear war, developments in military weapons technologies, and aspects of the U.S. counterintelligence program.[3] He was spying at the same time as Aldrich Ames in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Both Ames and Hanssen compromised the names of KGB agents working secretly for the United States, some of whom were executed for their betrayal. Hanssen also revealed a multimillion dollar eavesdropping tunnel built by the FBI under the Soviet Embassy in Washington. After Ames' arrest in 1994, some of these...

A proposal to build a Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel, an idea studied by the state in 2010, is sparking new interest. As the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from Atlantic Avenue to Sands Street faces a massive, $3.4 billion reconstruction, a once-in-a-lifetime window of opportunity has opened, says longtime Cobble Hill community leader and graphic designer Roy Sloane. Sloane came up with the tunnel concept at a planning session in June 2010. Sloane, former president of the Cobble Hill Association, is the first to admit he is not an engineer. He was, however, a member of the original Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Advisory Committee and...

The tunnel would sit about 100 feet below the surface of a fjord. Highway E39 in Norway is one of the most beautiful drives in the world, hugging the country's rugged west coast from Kristiansand to Trondheim. It is 684 miles of unending scenery, including rivers and lakes, waterfalls and mountains and numerous fjords. But if you look carefully at a road map, E39 is something of a dotted line. Each of the breaks occurs at seven fjords -- where drivers must put their cars on a ferry to get across. This stop-and-start, sea-and-land journey takes 21 hours. But the...

If you’re desperate for a smile while stuck in Seattle-area traffic, just look toward the billboards where Washington state has launched a $4.4 million marketing campaign that promotes the new Highway 99 tunnel as resembling a happy face. The messages remind motorists this four-lane tunnel goes completely under downtown, from the stadiums to the Space Needle. Television ads depict people performing a swooping “under” gesture — for instance, while ordering a chicken sandwich with meat beneath the lettuce. Viewers are encouraged to check www.99tunnel.com. The shape resembles the trademark smile of Amazon, which dominates several blocks near the tunnel’s north...

A tunnel leading from Mexico into the U.S. has been discovered near a border wall in the City of Hidalgo. "It's the most brazen approach I've seen to trying to come into the United States." Says Othal Brand, General Manager for the Hidalgo County Water Improvement District. Border patrol agents of the Marine Division Boat Patrol discovered the tunnel leading from Mexico into the U.S. The tunnel lies near a border wall on an embankment. The property belongs to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife. "At the bottom of a thirty-foot cliff so you would have never seen it, there's no...

Musk plans to unveil the test tunnel Tuesday, as well as the autonomous cars that will carry people through it. He's also set to show off elevators he says will bring users' own cars from the surface to the tunnel. Tuesday's reveal comes almost two years to the day since Musk announced on Twitter that "traffic is driving me nuts" and he was "going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging."

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Monday said she will support the construction of a street-level community grid to replace the elevated portion of Interstate 81 in Syracuse.Until now, Gillibrand declined to take a position on the issue, saying it was up to Central New Yorkers to choose the best option for replacing the 1.4-mile viaduct that cuts through the heart of Syracuse.Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said during a visit to Syracuse on Monday that she decided to speak out after discussions with community stakeholders who favor the grid over a tunnel or new elevated highway."Given where the stakeholders are -- and given what...

U.S. authorities are investigating an incomplete cross-border tunnel that Mexican authorities discovered more than 30 feet underground near Jacumba. The tunnel starts in a house in Jacume, Baja California, with lights and ventilation powered by solar panels. It also has a rail system. Cross-border tunnels are used for smuggling drugs and people into the U.S. A previous investigation by KPBS found that clandestine tunnels arose in parallel with fencing construction along the U.S.-Mexico border. Border Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations and the Drug Enforcement Administration found that the newly discovered tunnel has an exit shaft that doesn't quite break the surface...

An Israeli air strike on the Gaza Strip destroyed a Hamas tunnel giving frogmen unseen access to the sea from their base, the Israeli army said Sunday. Army spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters that the tunnel, the first of its kind discovered by Israeli intelligence, was hit on June 3 in the north of the strip as Israeli aircraft pounded over a dozen militant targets in Gaza. He said it was probable there were more like it not yet located by Israel.“We continue to monitor using all our operational, technical and intelligence capabilities that we have at our disposal,” he...

Maryland tunnel digger accused of killing pal feared North Korea missile attack By Nicole Hensley May 31, 2018 | 7:45 PM A man was charged in the death of a pal killed while digging a secret network of tunnels under his Maryland home he hoped would save him from North Korea’s budding nuclear missile program, according to his lawyer. After months of nuclear weapon tests by the isolated nation last year, 27-year-old Daniel Beckwitt began construction on an underground bunker to protect himself from a possible intercontinental ballistic missile attack at his Bethesda property. The digger’s paranoia was fueled by...

Schumer said, “It’s a funny thing. In a certain sense, we’re able to accomplish more in the minority than we were when we had the presidency or even were in the majority.” The Senate Minority Leader continued, “At the end of the day, as the minority party, we feel good about being able to succeed in so many ways. We don’t have the House, we don’t have the Senate, we don’t have the presidency, but we produced a darn good bill for the priorities we have believed in.” Sen. Schumer also touted the inclusion of the Gateway bridge project in...

A quick trip across the highest point on the U.S. Interstate Highway System, Interstate-70 in Colorado. The Eisenhower-Johnson Tunnel, under the continental divide.

The City Council in Hawthorne, California voted four to one last night in favor of a plan from Elon Musk’s Boring Company to dig a two-mile-long underground test tunnel. The Boring Company, which operates from SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne outside Los Angeles, had until now only dug into and under its own private property. But the newly-approved extension will stretch beyond the company’s property line, with the tunnel running 44 feet below the public roads and utilities that surround SpaceX headquarters. ... People who find themselves in the area won’t even notice that anything is happening, according to Brett Horton,...

Border Patrol agents in El Paso, Texas found a 75-foot tunnel along the U.S. bank of the Rio Grande river – and one former Border Patrol chief believes its origins could go back 100 years. The tunnel was found when Texas Department of Transportation employees were building near downtown and notified Border Patrol agents of a cave in. The Border Patrol’s Confined Space Entry Team went inside to take a look and found it goes further into the U.S. but not into Mexico. “Remediation efforts are already under way, which include filling the tunnel with concrete. At this time we...

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday said it had destroyed a border-crossing Hamas attack tunnel, the third in recent months, that penetrated hundreds of meters into both Israeli and Egyptian territory from the Gaza Strip, in an airstrike on Saturday night. “We completed the destruction of a third terror tunnel,” spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters early Sunday morning, denying claims made by Hamas that it was a smuggling tunnel. The tunnel, which was constructed differently from most tunnels in Gaza, began in the city of Rafah and crossed into Israel under the Kerem Shalom Crossing, through which hundreds...