This Standard provides guidelines for fire safety in new road, rail and bus tunnels. It covers uni-directional and bi-directional tunnels of various lengths meeting the limitations outlined in Clause 1.3.

This Standard can be applied to tunnels involving vehicles with no drivers such as driverless trains, although special additional considerations may apply. For rail and bus tunnels, this Standard addresses the tunnel/station interface. This Standard addresses tunnels used to carry both passengers and freight, and the combustible materials and goods carried by those vehicles.

This Standard is not specifically intended for existing tunnels; however, the general principles may be applied to the upgrade of existing tunnels to improve fire safety. In the case of modification works to a tunnel, the modification should be treated as building a new tunnel for interpretation of this Standard. The existing constraints however, may limit the choice of fire safety measures that can be implemented. Such constraints may result in the fire safety measures not being able to fully satisfy the objective contained in this Standard.