I don't find the case for historical preservation very compelling. Protecting a tunnel that nobody uses for anything isn't going to bring respect to the immigrants who died making it or their descendants. If that's the goal, I think it's better to do something that impacts living people by helping them directly. If people today want to use the tunnels to create art, then so be it I think. The world belongs to the living.
The same argument applies to all historical remains:
Great Pyramid? What good is it? Pile of rocks!
The tunnels are mute testament to human endurance, ingenuity, and grit. Those few despised people did what was then considered impossible. The least we should do is honor their memory.
Why can't they use them for bike and hiking use? In the Pacific Northwest there are dozens of old train tunnels and their train tracks that have been converted to bike and hiking trails.
Edit: And that is what they're doing actually with them.
I would expect there to be constant wind in a tunnel that passes through the Rocky Mountains, flowing from the end with higher barometric pressure. Is it possible to put a turbine in the tunnel and use it to generate wind power?
It must be a trick of perspective, but those tunnels look so small it's hard to imagine a train barreling through them.
Details from Wikipedia: "The cross section of a tunnel face was a 16-foot-wide (4.9 m), 16-foot-high (4.9 m) oval with an 11-foot (3.4 m) vertical wall."
