Abstract: The labor cost in the budget quota of railway tunnel engineering is insufficient, especially in plateau areas. Therefore, considering the change in labor cost in tunnel engineering volume quota in the budget quota of railway tunnels, a case study is conducted on the laborcost shortage in tunnels of BaojiLanzhou passengerdedicated line and Xi′anYan′an highspeed railway. Then, the necessity of solving the laborcost shortage in railway tunnel engineering, especially in plateau areas is analyzed, considering the difficulty of tunnel construction in plateau environments. The results show that in a plateau environment, the present budgeted quota per working day (RMB82 yuan) should be appropriately increased according to the nature of the project.

Key words: railway tunnel engineering, budget quota, labor cost