The opening ceremony will include presentations by Swiss artists, with selected highlights of the artistic opening programme on view during the events for the general public on 4 and 5 June, when 50,000 to 100,000 visitors are expected at the festival sites on either end of the 57km tunnel.
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The presence of such high-level guests at the opening shows that the new tunnel is about more than protecting the Alpine environment, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes reports.
(Sigi Tischler/Keystone via AP, file).
His paper was called “Journey through the Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) in the year 2000” – and this week his idea will be realised when the tunnel is unveiled.
An employee of AlpTransit Gotthard Ltd and a visitor stand at the NEAT Gotthard Base tunnel near Erstfeld May 7, 2012.
(Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP).
The world’s longest and deepest rail tunnel opened in Switzerland on Wednesday.
Just like Hannibal in ancient times, Swiss engineers have conquered the Alps.
The 57-kilometer long (35-mile long) tunnel creates a high-speed rail link deep beneath the famous mountain range, connecting northern and southern Europe.
The world’s longest and deepest rail tunnel will finally be opened in Switzerland, nearly two decades after the construction work began, a report said on Wednesday.
In the tunnel, freight trains will run up to 100 kilometers (60 miles) per hour, and passenger trains twice that at first, but long-term ambitions are for up to 250 kilometers an hour.
The tunnel has overtaken Japan’s 53.9 km Seikan rail tunnel as the longest in the world.
It is hoped that the tunnel will take pressure off the roadway traffic, amid concerns that the local ecosystem is being damaged by the pollution.
The number of daily rail passengers is expected to increase from 9,000 people now to 15,000 by 2020, according to the Swiss federal railway service.
Swiss planners have dreamt of such a tunnel for decades.
Switzerland pulled out all the stops for the inauguration. Although Switzerland isn’t one of the bloc’s 28 members, the European Union railway network gets a big boost from this shortcut through the Alps, notably on the route from Germany to Italy.
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Editor of Ground Engineering magazine, Claire Smith, told AFP that the success of the ambitious Gotthard venture, which was completed on schedule, “has cleared the path for many other (similar) projects”.
