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World's Longest, Deepest Rail Tunnel Opens In Switzerland (latimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: More than 2,200 years after the commander from the ancient North African civilization of Carthage led his army of elephants and troops over Europe's highest mountain chain, the Swiss have completed another gargantuan task: burrowing the world's longest railway tunnel under the Swiss Alps to improve European trade and travel. European dignitaries on Wednesday inaugurated the 35.4-mile Gotthard Railway Tunnel, a major engineering achievement deep under the Alps' snow-capped peaks. It took 17 years to build at a cost of 12.2 billion Swiss francs ($12 billion) -- but workers kept to a key Swiss tradition and brought the massive project in on time and on budget. It also bores deeper than any other tunnel, running about 1.4 miles underground at its maximum depth. The thoroughfare aims to cut travel times, ease roadway traffic and reduce the air pollution spewed from trucks traveling between Europe's north and south. Set to open for commercial service in December, the two-way tunnel can handle up to 260 freight trains and 65 passenger trains per day.
Lies. All lies. There's no such thing as tunnels. Or Switzerland, for that matter.
A few years ago when the TBM knocked through the last bit of rock in this tunnel, this cool video of the event might even have been posted on slashdot (can't remember where I ran across it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That's pretty big talk for someone that doesn't have a 57-kilometer tunnel.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A freight train can carry 10,000 tons, a 747 cargo plane can carry 140.
You could run 260 trains or 18,000 planes, which is going to be cheaper?
I'm no expert on the AlpTransits project (which includes the Gotthard Base Tunnel and a number of other new tunnels), but the whole project seems to have been on budget in part because they cut stuff. For example, the Loetschberg Base Tunnel, which is the second longest tunnel in this project, is opened but not complete. They just stopped part way through and declared it good enough (one bore is up and running -- I've been through it -- but the other isn't finished). Or, as wikipedia puts it:
Due to the soaring costs of the AlpTransit initiative, funds were diverted to the Gotthard Base Tunnel; and the LBT [Loetschberg Base Tunnel] is only half finished.
Even worse, work on the Zimmerberg Base Tunnel is suspended -- possibly without plans to complete it.
The whole "on budget and in time" thing doesn't sound so miraculous in context: the Gotthard Base Tunnel is part of a larger project that is neither on time nor on budget. However, the Swiss government sure did a good job spinning it that way.
Putting cars in there makes the whole project way more challenging. Trains you can supply with electricity to move and their own internal illumination is sufficient. If you put a large number of cars or trucks through there you have to have significantly stronger ventilation systems and you need to illuminate the tunnel to a much greater degree.
On top of that you need to factor in a much higher risk of crashes and hence fire risk, which means more escape tunnels, fire bunkers, and other systems that would otherwise not be required.
Add on to that that these tunnels are only 9m in diameter which is not wide enough for anything other than a single lane road. As a comparison the Clem7 tunnel in Brisbane is 12.5m in diameter to accommodate 2 lanes.
ehm... I do live in Switzerland, and 99% of all trains (either passenger or freight) run on electrical power
why spend all that money for a tunnel when you can simply fly over the mountains?
One primary use for the tunnel is to keep freight off the autobahn, but because it's a base tunnel, running straight under the Alps, it will allow bullet passenger trains to rip right through from Germany to Italy in half an hour. The old Gotthard Tunnel was the big engineering accomplishment of a century ago, punching through a high pass over the Alps, but it still required that trains spiral up into the mountains to the tunnel entrance, and then spiral down into the valley on the other side.
'Base tunnels' of this type are being built to replace the other long-distance tunnels through high Alpine passes. It will mean that European rail will go from being way ahead of American rail to being ludicrously far ahead of American rail.