At a total cost of about £ 235 million, London is to have a new high speed rail link between Paddington terminal in central London and the capital's principal international airport at Heathrow. Under the scheme, dedicated rolling stock will provide a 16-minute non-stop rail service between central London and the passenger terminals at Heathrow, cutting the present journey time by public transport by nearly three quarters.
Dallas is at last seeing real action on its much debated light rail public transport system. Ground breaking in early March '92 on the first two civil contracts sets in motion construction of the 20-mile starter system of the eventual 67-mile DART LRT.
The use of the NATM system for building tunnels in North America has not exactly caught on since its introduction in 1983. The first NATM projects in America are the Washington Metro (WMATA) Red Line and the Port Authority railway tunnel at Mt Lebanon near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both of these tunnels were built by the Austrian contractor, Ilbau.
The recent Austrian Tunnelling Seminar, held at Nottingham University in the United Kingdom, concentrated on modes of tunnel failure, their monitoring and the various packages available for providing long term support, all of which involve rock bolting and shotcreting in some form or other.