Saturday, October 16, 2010

World's Longest Tunnel - Gotthard Base Tunnel

The Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) is a railway tunnel beneath the Alps in Switzerland. With a length of 57 km (35.4 mi) and a total of 151.84 km (94.3 mi) of tunnels, shafts and passages,[1] it is the world's longest rail tunnel, surpassing the undersea Seikan Tunnel in Japan.

Gotthard Base Tunnel07

The project, which costs CHF 9.83 billion,[2] consists of two single track tunnels. It is part of the AlpTransit project, also known as the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA), which also includes the Lötschberg Base Tunnel between the cantons of Bern and Valais. It bypasses the 19th century Gotthardbahn, a winding mountain route across the Saint-Gotthard Massif and establishes a direct route usable by high-speed rail and heavy freight trains.

Gotthard Base Tunnel01 Gotthard Base Tunnel02 Gotthard Base Tunnel03 Gotthard Base Tunnel04 Gotthard Base Tunnel05 Gotthard Base Tunnel06 Gotthard Base Tunnel08 Gotthard Base Tunnel09 Gotthard Base Tunnel10 Gotthard Base Tunnel11 Gotthard Base Tunnel12 Gotthard Base Tunnel13 Gotthard Base Tunnel14 Gotthard Base Tunnel15

After 64 percent of Swiss voters accepted the AlpTransit project in a 1992 referendum, construction of the tunnel began in 1996.[3] Boring operations in the east tunnel were completed on 15 October 2010 in a cut-through ceremony broadcast live on Swiss TV.[4] When it opens for traffic in late 2017,[5] the tunnel will cut the 3.5-hour travel time from Zürich to Milan by an hour and from Zürich to Lugano to 1 hour 40 minutes.

The two portals are near the villages of Erstfeld, Uri and Bodio, Ticino. Nearby are two other St. Gotthard Tunnels: the 1881 Gotthard Rail Tunnel and the 1980 Gotthard Road Tunnel.(wiki)

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