Heathrow Airside Road Tunnel

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View into the twin bores at the west end of the ART Heathrow-ART-from-west-portal.png
View into the twin bores at the west end of the ART

The Heathrow Airside Road Tunnel (ART) is a tunnel at Heathrow Airport. It connects the airside roads around Terminals 1, 2 and 3 to those around Terminal 5. The tunnel was opened to traffic in March 2005 and is used only by vehicles with security clearance to drive airside.

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The ART is 1.42 kilometres (0.88 mi) long, consisting of 60 metres (200 ft) of twin-cell cut and cover box at each end, linked by a pair of 1.3-kilometre (0.81 mi) long bored tunnels. The ART was designed and built between 1999 and 2004 by a team of engineers from the BAA (the tunnel's owner), Amec, Laing O'Rourke, Morgan Est-Vinci and Mott MacDonald.

The bored tunnels have internal diameter of 8.1 metres (27 ft) and were driven by a 9.16-metre (30.1 ft) diameter Herrenknecht earth pressure balance tunnel boring machine. The excavations were lined with a bolted concrete lining 0.45 metres (1.5 ft) thick: these are unusually strong tunnel segments, required because the ART is so close to the surface and, at one point, passes 3 metres (9.8 ft) over the top of the Heathrow Express tunnel to Terminal 4.

Each bore contains an unusual road layout, consisting of a single carriageway 6 metres (20 ft) wide; just wide enough to allow an airport bus (Cobus 2700) to drive past another bus stopped at the side of the road. The two tunnels are linked by escape cross-passages at intervals of 100 to 130 metres (330–430 ft).

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