The world's longest and deepest rail tunnel has officially
opened in Switzerland, after almost two decades of construction work. Switzerland
says it will revolutionise European freight transport. The tunnel has overtaken
Japan's 53.9km Seikan rail tunnel as the longest in the world and pushed the
50.5km Channel Tunnel linking the UK and France into third place.
The project, which cost more than $12bn (£8.3bn) to build,
was endorsed by Swiss voters in a referendum in 1992. Voters then backed a
proposal from environmental groups to move all freight travelling through
Switzerland from road to rail two years later.
The completed tunnel travels up to 2.3 km below the surface
of the mountains above and through rock that reaches temperatures of 46C.
Engineers had to dig and blast through 73 different kinds of
rock, some as hard as granite and others as soft as sugar. More than 28m tonnes
of rock was excavated.
Now the completed tunnel - delivered on time and within
budget - will create a mainline rail connection between Rotterdam in the
Netherlands and Genoa in Italy.
When full services begin in December, the journey time for
travellers between Zurich and Milan will be reduced by an hour to two hours and
40 minutes.
Its trajectory will be flat and straight instead of winding
up through the mountains like the old rail tunnel and a road tunnel opened in
1980.
About 260 freight trains and 65 passenger trains will pass
through the tunnel each day in a journey taking as little as 17 minutes.
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