Implementation of common ducts/utility tunnels in public utility systems

Through detailed analysis of the main friction-areas, which appear regularly in the discussions concerning the implementation of the technology of the utility tunnel / common duct, this thesis attempts to verify the economical, technical safe, legally feasible possibilities for implementation in the field of public utilities and city management. Explicitly, the following prejudices and misinterpretations, which are widely scattered throughout the technical public, are tackled and overthrown: 1. Man-size utility tunnels are up to now untest in the requirements of long-term successful usage in the public utility system. 2. The different requirements in construction, operation and on safety aspects for each different utility system on its environment prevent a combined placement in a utility tunnel, since none of the hull materials, the possible placement structures or the safety management systems is able to satisfy ALL requirements. 3. Man-size utility tunnels are to be generally regarded as impossible to manage from the fire safety point of view. 4. The necessary co-operative structures between the different utility companies using a utility tunnel are neither legally nor operationally constructible on a long-term satisfactory basis for all the participants. 5. Man-size utility tunnels are unquestionably more expensive and therefore less economically useful than conventional utility systems. 6. The technology furthers no significant advances compared to the existing systems. While producing similar effects, it's just more elaborated. This research explicitly refutes each of these argumentations and - on the contrary - proves and verifies the possibilities of successful solutions for all the implicated detailed problems. Existing solutions for some problems are described, while for not yet in reality materialized problems feasible solutions are developed. On a whole this paper naturally can't solve all the questions, that are imaginable on the fields of utility tunnel / common duct construction and operation, but it definitely removes the most widespread and most often repeated misconceptions of the technical public on this technology.