AlpTransit Gotthard
Constructing the World’s Longest Tunnel

 

Ambros Zgraggen, deputy director of communications at AlpTransit Gotthard Ltd., will discuss the project AlpTransit – the construction of two new superlative tunnels crossing the Alps: The Lötschberg and the Gotthard.

In particular, he will focus on the Gotthard Base Tunnel, a flat rail link through the Alps and, at 34 miles, the world's longest tunnel.

Agenda

06:30 pm Welcome by Remo Steinmetz, SHARE Boston

06:35 pm Presentation by Ambros Zgraggen, AlpTransit followed by Q & A

07:30 pm Networking reception

 

 

St. Gotthard - the legendary mountain

 

Neither the Matterhorn, the Jungfrau nor the Pilatus is Switzerland’s mountain of the mountain. That honor goes to St. Gotthard, for it is here that Switzerland was allegedly founded and where it built its masterpieces. Every schoolchild knows the legend of the construction of the Teufelsbrücke, and how the people of Uri outwitted the devil. Many know the “St. Gotthard Mail Coach” painting by Rudolf Koller. Old men and women remember the military fort on St. Gotthard from the Second World War. Some people see the birth of their nation reflected in the freedom-loving shepherds of St. Gotthard. And all Swiss are proud of engineering feats like the mountain pass, the railway and its helical tunnels, the motorway and road tunnel, and what will eventually be the world’s longest railway tunnel.

 

The Gotthard is once again the site of a monumental development. The 34 miles base tunnel from Erstfeld to Bodio is a tunnel of superlatives. It is the longest railway tunnel in the world, the first level transalpine track, it connects central and southern Switzerland, forms a straight, near-horizontal connection, and is the boldest vision yet for conquering the Alps. Since the autumn of 1993, gigantic tunnel drilling machinery with drill heads 30 foot in diameter has been working its way through the millennia-old rock. Never has a tunnel been dug so far into a mountain. According to the computer model, the tips of the two screws will be less than 20 centimetres apart when they meet at the centre.

 

This pioneering achievement of the 21st century will bring major improvements to travel and transportation systems in the heart of Europe. Trains will have to climb or descend no more than eight meters per kilometer. Thanks to this small incline, trains will be able to race through the Alps at 155 miles per hour, cutting travel times between Zurich and Milan by an hour to only two hours and 40 minutes.

 

The near-level railway will also permit freight trains to carry more than twice as much weight as at present and travel at up to 100 miles an hour. The new Gotthard line is part of the New Rail Link through the Alps (NRLA). The NRLA project to build the two tunnels under St.Gotthard and the Lötschberg was approved by popular referendum in 1992 and gained planning permission in 1998.

 

It is due to be completed in 2016 at a cost of about USD 15 billion. But even now it’s already clear that the Gotthard base tunnel and its two single-track pipes will be the crowning achievement of the 21st Century. And when the new flat line opens, what will happen to the old Gotthard railway, this masterpiece of engineering prowess, when instead of 260 trains a day only three dozen locomotives will climb the helical tunnels by Wassen’s little church? Plans are afoot for the Gotthard line to become a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site.

 

See full story on the St. Gotthard in: Swiss Review, October 2006