1st June 2016

World's longest and deepest rail tunnel officially opens in Switzerland

After nearly 20 years of construction work, the Gotthard Base Tunnel was officially opened today.

With a route length of 57 km (35 miles) and a total of 152 km (94 miles) of tunnels, shafts and passages, the Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) becomes the world's longest rail tunnel. It is also the deepest, reaching as far down as 2500m (8,200 ft) below the Alps mountain range.

This remarkable feat of engineering is designed to provide a high-speed rail link from Rotterdam in the Netherlands to Genoa in Italy. The tunnel will slash the 3.5-hour travel time from Zürich to Milan by an hour, while the journey from Zürich to Lugano is reduced by 45 minutes. Trains will operate as fast as 250 km/h (155 mph) along the new route.

The GBT is part of the AlpTransit project, which also includes the shorter Ceneri Base Tunnel, scheduled to open in December 2020. After 64 percent of Swiss voters accepted the proposals in a 1992 referendum, construction began in 1996. The total projected cost was around 9.8 billion Swiss francs (€8.85 billion or US$10.3 billion), but the final cost exceeded $12 billion.

During the construction of the Gotthard Base Tunnel, workers had to bore through a wide variety of different rock strata, from hard granite to crumbly sedimentary rock. Tunnel boring machines carried out 80 per cent of the work in the main tunnels, while conventional blasting methods were used for the other 20 per cent. A total of 28.2 million tonnes of excavated material was removed – equivalent to six Egyptian pyramids. To save time and money, teams worked in different sections of tunnel at the same time, via access galleries and shafts. Temperatures inside reached as high as 50°C (122°F).

The tunnel will be hugely important to Europe's economy. More than 20 million people are located in the catchment area between southern Germany and northern Italy. As many as 260 freight trains and 65 passenger trains will pass through every day. Thanks to a flat and relatively straight route, connections will be faster and more punctual. The speed, capacity and reliability of freight traffic will increase, making it more competitive. In addition to boosting the trade route between northern and southern Europe, it will also shift alpine traffic from road to rail, cutting CO2 emissions and helping to protect the surrounding ecosystem.

The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland attended a grand opening ceremony today. In a speech at the northern entrance to the tunnel, the Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann said it was a "giant step for Switzerland, but equally for our neighbours and the rest of the continent."

The GBT is unlikely to hold the record for very long, however. China is planning to build an even longer tunnel underneath the Bohai Strait, forming a vital high-speed route between the north and south of the country. This will measure 76 miles (122 km), over twice as long as the Gotthard Base Tunnel.

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