Switzerland yesterday inaugurated the Ceneri tunnel, the third and last of a major railway project across the Alps, which is expected to transform freight transport between northern and southern Europe.
After the inauguration of the Luchberg tunnel in 2007 and another in Saint-Gotthard 2016, this new tunnel in the southern Italian region of Ticino comes to form the last link of the new railway line in the Alps (NLFA) that will facilitate the movement of goods through Trains connect through Rotterdam in the Netherlands to Genoa in Italy.
The goal is also to reduce the number of trucks crossing the Alps while allowing goods to pass through this rail project.
The tunnel, which is expected to start operating in December, will also allow many train passengers to shorten their journeys.
For example, the journey from Zurich to Milan, made faster thanks to the Saint-Gotthard Tunnel, would initially take only three hours and 17 minutes before dropping to three hours, compared to three hours and 40 minutes now.
Transportation of goods in Switzerland has always required rigid locomotives to cross the mountain paths and the painstaking unloading and loading operations at the border to place semi-trailers on trains before crossing the country.
However, this new project, which reduces the height difference between the different sites, will greatly facilitate the transportation of goods in the mountainous Alps.
"It is the last link that allows us to extend a flat railway line across the Alps," said Vincent Ducrot, director of the Federal Railways Authority (CFF), on the sidelines of the tunnel presentation to the media on the eve of its inauguration.
"In the future, we may be able to operate 750 meters of freight trains capable of transporting 2,100 tons of cargo," he added.
Ducrot reviewed the environmental benefits of this project, explaining that this tunnel allows the equivalent of about three thousand semi-trailers to pass through the new railways in the Alps, which would allow a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by "900 tons per day."
The capacity of this tunnel, which extends over 15.4 kilometres in length, and rises 329 meters above sea level, has about 170 freight trains and 180 passenger trains per day.
Swiss Confederation PresidentSimonetta Sommaruga cuts the launch tape just as the first freight train officially crosses the tunnel. The President said that this railway line crossing the Alps is "our country's project of the century".
It is "the largest investment we have made in the country," according to the president, who pointed out that this project constitutes "a strong signal for a smart transportation policy."
The new railway line in the Alps, which was voted by the Swiss in a referendum in 1992 and again in 1994, cost about 24 billion Swiss francs. It is funded in part from fees levied on heavy vehicles. It includes three tunnels, with Saint-Gotthard being the most expensive of them, with a budget of 12.2 billion Swiss francs, compared to 3.6 billion for the Ceneri tunnel. The Saint-Gotthard Tunnel, which extends over 57 km, is the longest tunnel in the world.
