Port Tunnel closed due to er faulty camera

mike65

WTF?

How is a borked camera (one for gathering revenue?) going to close a tunnel, all the HGVs have free reign on the quays until reopening. And of course there is traffic conjestion on the M50 and surrounding roads.

Mike.

prendy

well like everything in Dublin if one little thing goes wrong the citys roads grind to a hault...pearse st yesterday anyone?

Chris_533976

Plus if a camera goes out and something decides to catch on fire there, well lets just say it could get bad quickly.

tbh

Pearse st yesterday was a funny one. I assumed the worst and left the car in work at 4:45, walking down Pearse st it seemed to be grand (out/northbound), but the opposite direction looked borked.

slightly ot, I know someone on boards is involved with the Swords express. Hats off, It's a fantastic service - I'm looking at seriously reorganising my schedule so I can take advantage of it.

kravmaga

mike65 wrote: »

WTF?

How is a borked camera (one for gathering revenue?) going to close a tunnel, all the HGVs have free reign on the quays until reopening. And of course there is traffic conjestion on the M50 and surrounding roads.

Mike.

http://www.dublincity.ie/RoadsandTraffic/Traffic/Pages/TrafficCamerasMap.aspx

Went to AA Ireland website, traffic disruption section, no reason why tunnel is closed, no mention of faulty camera etc, like no clear communication on what problem is..................

Yeah Tunnel closed in both directions, went to Transroute's website , tunnel operator, no mention of closure on site, website is still under construction ???? they are having a laugh

Red Alert

Well of course they'd close it and have you think that that one camera in itself is the only defense in case of fire- these guys are worse cowboys than NTR :rolleyes:

Bluetonic

blueeyedboy wrote: »

Went to AA Ireland website, traffic disruption section, no reason why tunnel is closed, no mention of faulty camera etc, like no clear communication on what problem is..................

What difference is it if there is a reason given or not? It's not going to change anything from a user perspective.

BaconZombie

So is there Swords Express still running via a different route?
If so anybody hear of a ETA of trip time?

tbh wrote: »

Pearse st yesterday was a funny one. I assumed the worst and left the car in work at 4:45, walking down Pearse st it seemed to be grand (out/northbound), but the opposite direction looked borked.

slightly ot, I know someone on boards is involved with the Swords express. Hats off, It's a fantastic service - I'm looking at seriously reorganising my schedule so I can take advantage of it.

antoinolachtnai

Yep, running, but behind schedule. I am just waiting on an update on where exactly the buses are at the moment.

Colm R

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Yep, running, but behind schedule. I am just waiting on an update on where exactly the buses are at the moment.

What route do you take in the event of a tunnel closure. Or is it up to the driver to make the best decesion with what information he has.

antoinolachtnai

That's it, we do our best. We have to pick up along north wall quay. On the way back there are a few more choices. So we have a few buses leaving the centre in the next 40 minutes. We have three extra buses on. The round trip is over 2 hours, as opposed to the usual 70 minutes.

Fratton Fred

blueeyedboy wrote: »

went to Transroute's website , tunnel operator, no mention of closure on site, website is still under construction ???? they are having a laugh

Maybe they made it too small and need another two years to rebuild it?:D

Random

Is there a walkway alongside the roads on an elevated level like most tunnels? Couldn't they have someone stand and watch the area the camera covers? Hell, even have them stand at one of the service entrances?

Alun

The entry on rte.ie/news says it was a failure of the tunnel's safety systems, not just one camera. That'd be cameras, heat sensors, smoke detectors, the lot. It'd be pretty irresponsible, if not illegal to operate the tunnel under those circumstances, don't you agree?

Mitch Connor

Alun wrote: »

The entry on rte.ie/news says it was a failure of the tunnel's safety systems, not just one camera. That'd be cameras, heat sensors, smoke detectors, the lot. It'd be pretty irresponsible, if not illegal to operate the tunnel under those circumstances, don't you agree?

yes it would - but the initial statement said ONE camera. IF there is a problem with the safety system in general then SAY that. If people know there is a good reason for the tunnel to be closed they are likely to be less annonyed by the closure. Giving a halfassed reason doesn't help the situation in anyway at all.

Alun

Tauren wrote: »

yes it would - but the initial statement said ONE camera. IF there is a problem with the safety system in general then SAY that. If people know there is a good reason for the tunnel to be closed they are likely to be less annoyed by the closure. Giving a halfassed reason doesn't help the situation in anyway at all.

I agree, but what was the actual source of that statement? And was it even reported accurately? The media and/or the AA have been known to mess up these things up before, you know.

Anyway, anyone with half a brain would know that they wouldn't close the entire tunnel for that long just for one broken camera anyway, so it's academic.

ardmacha

The entry on rte.ie/news says it was a failure of the tunnel's safety systems, not just one camera. That'd be cameras, heat sensors, smoke detectors, the lot. It'd be pretty irresponsible, if not illegal to operate the tunnel under those circumstances, don't you agree?

If the entire safety system has a single point of failure then that is pretty irresponsible.

More likely it was a less catastrophic fault and they just don't have proper plan B to deal with it, because they couldn't care less if the whole city is in chaos.

bryanmurr

mike65 wrote: »

WTF?

How is a borked camera (one for gathering revenue?) going to close a tunnel, all the HGVs have free reign on the quays until reopening.

Mike.

Its not a speed camera, its a camera for monitoring the tunnel in the event of an incident. Tunnel's are not designed for HGV's just cars in general so because we divert every HGV down our tunnel extra safety precautions are taken.

Victor

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0227/tunnel.html

Dublin Port Tunnel re-opens
Wednesday, 27 February 2008 20:09

Both lanes of the Dublin Port Tunnel have re-opened after a safety systems failure lead to the tunnel being closed for most of the day.

A team of contract specialists worked through the day to correct the problem.

The National Roads Authority says it will carry out a full investigation to determine the cause of the systems crash.

The ban on heavy goods vehicles in the city centre was temporarily lifted because of the incident.

AA Roadwatch reported heavy traffic on most routes in the city centre earlier today as a result of the closure.

Aquavid

The thing about "a camera" was down to cloth-ears on the part of journalists, at least on RTE anyway.

What failed was SCADA - a computer system for monitoring and alerting on all of the different inputs from all the safety systems in the tunnel.

I listened to 5-Live on RTE, and when the Gardai spokesman mentioned SCADA the presenter thought he said "camera" and kept asking about the camera until the Garda spokesman corrected her.

SCADA systems are widely used throughout many utility industry - electricity, pipelines, tunnells, water/waste etc, and have been known to fail on occasion, either due to software or human error.

If you look at the report into the huge US/Canadian power blackout a few years ago, one of the many contributing factors was the fact that at one regulatory agency, who were monitoring the grid for potential problems, the SCADA system had stopped displaying realtime data, and those monitoring it could not see the developing problems.

Aquavid

Red Alert

Their SCADA system is probably rubbish - knowing the Irish way to do it it's probably a normal Dell PC running windows or something. Idiots!

stiofanD

Today's Irish Times:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/frontpage/2008/0228/1203619560019.html

Port tunnel builders to be sued over shutdowns

TIM O'BRIEN

TWO STATE bodies have initiated moves to sue the builders of the Dublin Port Tunnel over repeated systems failures which they claim have led to frequent closures.

The decision by the National Roads Authority and Dublin City Council to take legal action followed a breakdown that caused the closure of the tunnel for most of yesterday.

This led to severe traffic congestion across the north city with journey times between the city centre and the airport taking up to 70 minutes.

The council was also forced to temporarily lift its ban on heavy goods vehicles in the city centre.

Officials from the NRA and the city council spent much of yesterday in joint consultation with legal advisers after it emerged the latest problem involved a malfunction of the tunnel's electronic systems.

Yesterday evening, with the tunnel still closed, the NRA took the decision to proceed with a legal claim for compensation against the tunnel builder, joint venture operation Nishimatsu-Mowlem-Irishenco.

In a letter to the consortium, seen by The Irish Times, the NRA said both it and the city council had been "repeatedly reassured and guaranteed that the tunnel systems would be fully fit for their intended purpose and that the installed equipment would be both durable and resilient".

But since the handover of the tunnel just over a year ago, "we have had a number of significant equipment malfunctions", the letter said.

"We put you on notice that we are taking legal action to recover all costs arising from deficiencies in the equipment that you have provided," it continued.

The letter, circulated to the Department of Transport and the council, claimed the equipment problems were "defects for which NMI (Nishimatsu-Mowlem-Irishenco) are fully responsible and accountable. Despite our efforts to have Nishimatsu-Mowlem-Irishenco remedy these issues you have failed to do so".

In a separate matter NMI is still seeking payments from the city council of up to €100 million for completion of the tunnel, a move which would put the final cost of the 4.5-km route close to €900 million. The claim is currently at arbitration.

Following the restructuring of Mowlem in recent years, its business was taken over by British company Carillion plc which is pursuing the claim on behalf of the joint venture.

A spokeswoman for Carillion plc yesterday confirmed it had taken over the business of Mowlem and was responsible for the claim for further payments.

But she said the company would not comment on a commercial matter which included legal action from a client company.

The northbound bore of the tunnel reopened at 6.40pm yesterday, more than eight hours after the facility was closed shortly before 10am.

Normal service resumed at 7.15pm when motorists were allowed access to the southbound bore.

A Garda spokesman said the city centre wide HGV ban recommenced immediately after the route reopened.

kravmaga

Yes just heard this on RTE news, as warrantly is still valid they are sueing contractors and asking them to immediately repair /fix safety systems.

But the question here is who signed off on the testing and Commissioning of the safety systems.

Questions need to be answered here and whether NM1 or Irishenco are to blame is not know at this stage.

Also I see in the news Transroute , the tunnel operator have an IR problem on there hands with staff payments issue, the staff want parity with staff payment in line with Eastlink and Westlink .

Sounds like low moral with Transroute at the moment and they have a large number of vacancies to fill, ie Tolling Manager position is vacant!!!

kravmaga

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA

It may be a real time issue here of human error, ie staff not knowing what to do.

Where was the Emergency Management Plan , surely they have an escallation process, process flow chart to work to in their control room.........
Okay close the tunnel is the main thing to do, but why did it take so long to repair the Tunnel safety system.

Why is it they get it right in Austria /Switzerland and UK, again it does not give me confidence in the company managing the tunnel.

I cannot believe all safety systems failed in total , where is the due diligence process here.

tbh

typo in your link should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA

kravmaga

Folks,

see link on IBEC PR today on Tunnel

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0228/tunnel.html?RTEMAILID

RTE Journalist manages to obtain copies of tunnel operator Safety Policy Document and control room logs.

See it on Prime Time Investigates tonight on RTE 1, serious allegations being made by the journalist on breaches of safety by the tunnel operator

kravmaga

Have just watched the RTE Prime Time on the Dublin Port Tunnel.

NRA, Minister /Dept. of Transport , DCC and Transroute have a lot of questions to answer , fire exits blocked with water containers which are no use to Dublin Fire Brigade,

As Conor Faughnan said from AA maybe they need to link up with EUROTAP

See link,

http://www.eurotestmobility.com/eurotappub.php

kravmaga

http://www.eurotestmobility.com/images/filelib/eurotap_r_sauter_1601.pdf?PHPSESSID=e5e0a3b0a229ed527f90908f9f3e7018

lost marbles

stiofanD wrote: »

Today's Irish Times:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/frontpage/2008/0228/1203619560019.html

passing the buck .jeeeze do they not have the balls to say "right so we f#cked up with the system we used the balls in our court now so we have to sort it out "instead of it was,nt our fault " did they not check out this system before they took on the tender or was this another nod and a wink

Victor

lost marbles wrote: »

passing the buck .jeeeze do they not have the balls to say "right so we f#cked up with the system we used the balls in our court now so we have to sort it out "instead of it was,nt our fault " did they not check out this system before they took on the tender or was this another nod and a wink

It was design and build. The contractor is required to provide a working system with minimum downtime.

lost marbles

Victor wrote: »

It was design and build. The contractor is required to provide a working system with minimum downtime.

your right in what you say but isnt there some row going on with the contractor about money owed and maybe this is whats behind the whole story and the passing of the buck all the gliches should have been worked out before the tunnel opened .which imo was done too early as a pre election ploy .ever wonder why there is so much down time with so called maintaince closers. it was rushed to get it opened and now paying the price

SeanW

The cameras here are part of the tunnel safety monitoring system.

AFAIK they're a completely different ball game to the "safety cameras" that enforce 80km speed limits on certain N-classified dual carraigeways ...

Red Alert

Should blocking fire access doors not make the person who ordered it liable to criminal prosecution?

Seth Brundle

Red Alert wrote: »

Should blocking fire access doors not make the person who ordered it liable to criminal prosecution?

Nobody was ever charged for the Stardust - what makes you think things have changed?

Capt'n Midnight

What ever happened to redundancy ?

If you need two cameras, put in three so you can keep going.

IF they get fined would be a lot more expensive than a camera

Seth Brundle

I don't know if you saw the PT report last night Capt'n but apparently the safety guidelines said that if two cameras in series go down then the tunnel is to close. Allegedly,this happened too often so they decided to re-write the manual so that now three cameras have to go down! Clever or what?

mike65

They have 100 cameras (between both bores I presume) so 50 a side how long is the tunnel?

Mike.

Wishbone Ash

mike65 wrote: »

They have 100 cameras (between both bores I presume) so 50 a side how long is the tunnel?

Mike.

4,500 metres - one every 90 metres then so.

Capt'n Midnight

Could they not have some 2.4GHz wireless cameras for backup , clip it to side of the tunnel and away you go.

Red Alert

That would be called being pragmatic and intelligent, thus not tolerated!

Capt'n Midnight

Sory, I keep forgetting that our republic is the biggest exporter of bananas in Europe.

Seth Brundle

There is a huge sense of hyprocisy here.
NRA Meeting Agenda
Item #1: Lets introduce a privatised speed camera system to make our roads safer. We reckon loads of money will be made also.
Item #2: There are loads of safety issues with the DPT but feck it, it should be alright! The Gotthard Tunnel was a freak accident!

Victor

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Could they not have some 2.4GHz wireless cameras for backup , clip it to side of the tunnel and away you go.

Will they work underground without line of sight?

Red Alert

They usually will do OK, if they were TCP/IP cameras then a standard 802.11 WLAN would do the trick.

Capt'n Midnight

Victor wrote: »

Will they work underground without line of sight?

you put receivers in the tunnel too

And they'd have to be IP cameras to allow more than 4 to run at the same time.

low tech would be mirrors and telescope


But how far apart are the cameras ?
isn't it less than the distance between trucks

Wishbone Ash

The tunnel appeared to be closed around 7pm this evening. I was heading up the Santry sliproad and the large signs were lit with "All Traffic Stop" and something about an overheight vehicle. I'm not sure whether the truck in question ignored the sensors, preceeded and made contact or if it was just the standard advance closure notice activated by a high vehicle.