The Ministerio de Fomento has announced a modification of the project of the step of the TGB for the Eixample (for the street Valčncia) that had agreed on the Town hall, the Catalan Government and the Spanish Government. It had been like a kind of "miracle" of the holy future Gaudí to have put in agreement three administrations —Socialist (Clos), Convergent (Pujol) and Popular (Aznar)— to remove the tracing of the Sagrada Família. Now, the tunnel will pass for the street Mallorca. We come from a TGV Madrid-Lleida that it cannot travel to normal speed for lack of safety, a platform of the alighting-place of Grŕcia that there has stayed half a meter below the door of the trains and of a tunnel of Carmel who has sunk several houses. This has generated in the population a logical distrust, an understandable fear of the future tunnel of the TGV for the Eixample.
But seeing the subways that cross Paris or London to different levels or the tunnel of the Channel, the distrust of the population would have to go towards his leaders, and in no case to the engineers and to the Technology, which for years has resolved how to pass a train below a city densely built with full guarantees. It is to say: if there do not repeat the corruptions that the TGV Madrid-Lleida has suffered, if the barbarities of Carmel are not done; if really the budget become exhausted in the work and everything is realized under control of guarantee of execution, the TGV does not suppose any danger for the houses of the Eixample.
And for the Quarry? Since the Quarry weighs much more than any house than the Eixample, and therefore there will be necessary to reinforce the tunnel in that section.
And with the Sagrada Família? Since the Sacred Family is a gigantic mass of stone. Probably manage to weigh 150.000 tons when it is finished. And it is very slender: his eighteen towers have a height average of 100 meters, more than four times 24 meters of the houses of the Eixample.
Logically, the part constructed personally by Gaudí —the crypt, the apse and the front of the Nativity— will not suffer, since Gaudí made his foundations conscious that he was bequeathing to the Catalonia's capital «the most elegant Temple of the Christianity», destined to last indefinitely, many centuries, as a medieval cathedral, capable of supporting earthquakes, wars, floods, climatic changes, etc.
The tunnel would pass close to the front of the Glory, nowadays in construction and that would be the most affected part.
Her foundations come to 15 meters, over the groundwater level. The projected tunnel would go on to 30 meters, with a screen of piles of concrete up to 45 meters.
If the works are done carefully, little by little, without turning aside to save budgets and, especially, with a technical exhaustive and transparent control, there has be no risk.
But, and after the works? After the works, the step of the trains will produce a few major vibrations that the caused ones for the subways, the trucks of works or the tourists' buses that every day make a detour to the Sacred Family. Nobody knows what effect it can have this in a period superior to one century: if, for example, it will finish there being modified the geological area on which the foundations of the Temple settle themselves and, for this reason, the building will crack or will degenerate in ten centuries instead of in fifteen. It is a latent risk that can be reduced introducing forts measurements of elasticity in the tunnel. |
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