By lyndamyer
As part of the upgrade of the South Eastern Freeway, which is the most direct connection between Adelaide and Melbourne, work to install 23 new exhaust fans in Australia’s Heysen Tunnels has commenced.
Linking Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills, this tunnel is a key corridor and its refit costs A$150m (£79.8m), while it is due to address elements that are at the end of their service life, to improve safety, traffic management and incident response capabilities.
Advancing this project is up to McConnell Dowell Constructors (Aust) Pty Ltd, and its scope of includes:
- upgrades to the tunnel lighting to a new LED system;
- installation of a new automated fire suppression system;
- upgrades to the tunnel ventilation system;
- repairs to the tunnel lining and installation of monitoring equipment;
- upgrades to the Intelligent Transport System equipment, including thermal incident detection systems, new and replacement CCTV, electronic speed and messaging signage and over height vehicle detection;
- upgrades to the traffic management system to restrict access to the tunnels in an emergency; and
- upgrades to emergency communication systems, including public address, radio rebroadcast, in-tunnel signage and help phones to improve safety and network reliability.
In order to dispersing smoke in the event of an incident, the new exhaust fans , that involve eight in the Crafers-bound tunnel and 15 in the Adelaide-bound tunnel, form part of the tunnels’ fire suppression system. Additionally providing of ventilation, control exhaust fumes as well as clear any fog in the tunnel will be the contents of this program, whereas a major number of fans are required for the Adelaide-bound tunnel to allow for smoke or fog to be pushed downhill ahead of traffic.
The scheduled date for completion of the fan installation is the first half of next year.
In March 2023, the initial activities and tunnel lining repairs started and the estimated time for end of refurbishment process is the second half of 2024.
