Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Swiss drill a lengthy shortcut

GENEVA - With a final blast through mountain granite, Swiss engineers linked Europe's north and south by completing drilling Thursday for the world's longest overland tunnel - a cavernous shaft that burrows under the Swiss Alps and that will shave about an hour off the travel time for skiers in Germany heading down to resorts near the Matterhorn.

The 21-mile Loetschberg tunnel is the latest in a string of engineering feats - from the Channel Tunnel linking France to England to a bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark - that are breaking down natural barriers in an increasingly borderless Europe.

The Loetschberg, set to open to trains in 2007, will be longer than the current overland record-holder, Japan's 16.4-mile Hakkoda Tunnel, and will come third overall behind the underwater 33.5-mile Seikan Tunnel, also in Japan, and the 31.3-mile Channel Tunnel.

It will trim to under two hours the time trains will need to cross between Germany and Italy, a journey that now takes about 31/2 hours.

The Loetschberg has been dug parallel to an even more ambitious project: the 36-mile Gotthard Tunnel, which will be the world's longest when it is completed over the next decade or so.

For Swiss taxpayers, who are footing the bill for the twin, multibillion-dollar projects, the main selling point is that they will move heavy European Union trucks off narrow highways and onto trains.

The Loetschberg tunnel will have the benefit of getting skiers to Swiss resorts more quickly. The trip from Bern, at the northern end of the tunnel, to Visp near ski regions like Switzerland's Zermatt and Italy's Courmayeur on the southern side of the tunnel, will be cut in half: to 55 minutes from 110.

Trips across Switzerland will be shorter, because trains won't have to make slow, switch-back climbs to reach older tunnels. And the new track with rails cushioned on rubber will be suitable for high-speed trains from Germany, France and Italy.

On Thursday, after an engineer sounded three warning blasts on a horn, dynamite blew through the 12 feet of granite still blocking the way between the tunnel drilled from the north and the other half bored from the south.

"With the breakthrough we have carved out the mountain for all to see. We are moving on," said Moritz Leuenberger, Switzerland's transport minister.

Switzerland is at the center of a north-south European axis where traffic has increased more than tenfold since 1980. The Swiss have tired of traffic jams caused by big rigs and vacationers filling their narrow valleys.

Starting in 2007, trucks will have to be loaded on to rail carts in southern Germany and northern Italy, removing them from some of Switzerland's most treacherous mountain roads and pristine nature areas.

The final excavation for the tunnel occurred at the midpoint of the tunnel, some 5,900 feet beneath the 12,170-foot Balmhorn mountain. The breakthrough came 11 years after drilling began.

The two halves of the tunnel met almost perfectly: The center of the bore coming from the north was only 5 inches off the center of the bore coming from the south and their heights were fractions of an inch off.

As a traditional alphorn played a mountain melody, workmen in hard hats greeted each other, waving the Swiss flag and sharing bottles of wine.

On completion, the Loetschberg tunnel will allow freight trains to travel at speeds of over 100 mph and passenger trains at 150 mph.

The final cost for the Loetschberg will be $3.5-billion, almost $840-million over budget. For the combined project, the budget has now escalated to $13.7-billion, an increase of $3-billion over original estimates.

Because of cost constraints, only the eastern tube of the Loetschberg is now fully excavated. Drilling on the western side will be completed as track work progresses on the eastern side.

[Last modified April 29, 2005, 00:35:12]