[Article] World's longest tunnel is completed

[Colm Moore]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1015/switzerland.html

World's longest tunnel is completed

A giant drilling machine has made its way through the final section of Alpine rock to complete the world's longest tunnel, after 15 years of sometimes lethal construction work.

Engineers from both sides shook hands after the bore had pummeled through the final 1.5 metres of rock.

Tunnel workers paid tribute to their colleagues who had died on the construction site with a minute's silence as the names of the eight victims were read out during an emotional ceremony for the breakthrough.

'The Gotthard will forever be a spectacular and grandiose monument with which all tunnels will be compared,' said Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger.

The 57km Gotthard base tunnel will form the lynchpin of a new network between northern and southeastern Europe that could shift truck freight onto rail and decongest the Alps in central Switzerland when it opens in 2017.

Passengers will ultimately be able to travel from the Italian city of Milan to Zurich in less than three hours and further north into Germany, cutting the journey time by an hour.

But the €7bn tunnel is also the fruit of a popular wave of concern about pollution in the Alps with booming road traffic transiting from neighbouring countries.

After 15 years of construction work, the 9.5m wide drilling machine bore through the remaining 1.5m of rock to join two ends of the tunnel some 2km under a mountain.

The stage-managed event, attended by 200 dignitaries 30km along the tunnel, was broadcast live on Swiss television and watched by European Union transport ministers at a meeting in Luxembourg.

But the spotlight also fell on some 2,500 tunnel workers, many of whom will be treated to a party above the breakthrough point in the mountain village of Sedrun.

Eight have died since construction of the new tunnel began 15 years ago, blasting and boring through 13m cubic metres of rock in hot and humid conditions.

The Gotthard tunnel exceeds the 53.8km Seikan rail tunnel linking the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido and the world's longest road tunnel, the 24.5km Laerdal in Norway.

Around 300 trains should be able to travel through the Gotthard's twin tubes every day, at up to 250km/ph for passenger trains.

The current ageing and narrow 15km tunnel higher up the flanks of the St Gotthard can cope with just a fraction of that capacity at less than half the speed.