By the 1920s Merseysiders wanted to drive across the river between Liverpool and Birkenhead. The question arose again whether to build a bridge or tunnel. The Mersey rail tunnel showed that a tunnel could be built under the Mersey, but council engineers favoured a bridge. In 1923 they made a detailed investigation. They surprised even themselves by recommending that a tunnel was a better option. It boiled down to two factors. The first was cost. The tunnel would cost about two thirds of the cost of a bridge. Secondly, a tunnel would not suffer from disruption caused by the weather. A few years later, another advantage emerged. During the Second World War the tunnel proved to be much more secure from attack than the bridge would have been.
The first road tunnel, Queensway, was an amazing success, opened in December 1933 in a blaze of publicity by King George VI.
By 1953 about 8 million vehicles were using it. In 1958 a plan was put forward for a second tunnel.
This one was slightly less popular than the first because many houses had to be demolished in the Scotland Road and Wallasey areas to build it. This tunnel was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1971. The new tunnel, Kingsway, was much needed. By 1971 traffic levels had more than doubled again since 1953.
The tunnel is not very deep, with the lowest point being only 170 feet below high water level in the river. (At one point, mid river, there is only 4 feet of solid rock above the tunnel).
1,200,000 tons of rock were excavated using explosives and pneumatic drills between 1926 and 1931. The rock went to fill in Storeton Quarry on the Wirral side and to Dingle and Otterspool on the Liverpool side. The general technique used was to excavate and line the top (road) half of the tunnel, and then to excavate and line the bottom (tramway) half of the tunnel.
The construction of the tunnel was massive in itself, but it also involved construction of gigantic ventilating machinery, shafts and buildings. The final cost of the tunnel and all the machinery etc was just over £6 million. With land and other bits and pieces this came to nearly £7 million or £7.5 million if you add the cost of borrowing during the construction.
Deploying the Crip Stix, I met up with a few fellow explorers, this was my first real outing since I had broken my foot.
Props to WB for driving, even though we ended up at the wrong tunnel entrance initially and delayed proceedings we finally made it into the wonderful Art Deco building where we first watched a short DVD before commencing....
....In your tunnelZ.
DVD (yawn)
Down we go
Control Room
In your shafts
Big ass Ventilation Fan
Going Deeper
Blast Doors
Exhaust Ducts
...And Deeper
Exhaust Shaft
Tunnels
Below the road deck - Central Avenue
Nick UK Lens Fail
Various People shots borrowed or sent by the crew
Pic taken by Appo.. I'm on the far left, just behind Gone
Outta Here
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