World’s Longest Overland Tunnel
Thru’ Alps Mountain in Europe: 35 km or 21 mile long.
“We have moved a mountain,” declared Swiss Transport Minister, Moritz Leuenberger, inaugurating World’s Longest Overland Tunnel.
The Loetschberg tunnel took eight years to build at a cost of 3.5 dollars and crosses from Germany to Italy in just under two hours. Earlier it was a four hour journey.
The train runs on rubber-cushioned rails at 250 kmph, swishing a smooth and quiet ride.
Even when the train was at high speed and at points where it was 2,000 meters below the mountain, cell phone reception was strong throughout the journey.
Switzerland has an even more ambitious project going, at the moment, to be opened in 2017.
The 57 kilometer long Gotthard Tunnel. This would be the longest tunnel in the world, when it is opened for traffic in ten years.
At present, the undersea Seikan Tunnel of Japan is the longest, at 53.9 km. Next comes the Channel Tunnel connecting England and France at a length of 50.4 kilometer.
The urgent need of this expensive tunnel is to ease mostly road freight traffic. Switzerland is at the center of a north-south European axis. Traffic has increased more than tenfold since 1980.
The huge rigs and the enormous number of vacationers filling the narrow valleys of Switzerland have created almost perpetual traffic jams.
The idea to shift traffic from road to rail has remained overwhelmingly popular even though the cost has run billions of dollars over the estimated budget.
“We did not want to become part of the road corridor for 40-ton trucks streaming north and south, and so decided to opt for rail tunnels,” explained Leuenberger, the Transport Minister.
Passenger trains will commence operations, at an amazing frequency, from December 2007. One hundred and fifteen trains a day will cross the Alps mountain through this tunnel.
Passengers will be carried by trains running at the rate of one train every half hour . . . smoothly and silently.
The Loetschberg tunnel was originally designed as a twin tunnel. Train traffic was to flow through separate tubes in both directions.
Due to high cost of construction only one tube is completed and opened now for traffic. The trains will alternate travelling through in opposite directions.
It is estimated, more than 4,000 heavy lorries cross the Swiss Alps, by road every day. This heavy traffic invariably leads to traffic jams, air pollution and accidents.
Now 90 percent of this traffic would be no more on roads. The heavy taxes on road transportation too would contribute no less towards this happy end.
Less congestion on roads mean clearer and fresher air without petrol and diesel fumes.
Switzerland is a landlocked nation. It is surrounded by Germany in the North, Austria in the East, Italy in the South and France in the West.
It is majestically mountainous with scenic beauty unparalleled in every direction of the compass.
It is a neutral country. It had always kept itself uninvolved in any of the multitude of Europeans wars of the past centuries. The last two World Wars too were no exceptions.
Its strict neutrality of over 400 years made it one of the most wealthiest country in the world. The key Industry of Switzerland is Banking.
It was so strict in its policy of ‘neutrality’, it avoided joining the United Nations till five years back, 2002.
Compiled from BBC Newsletters by benzaloy Read here too if you are curious like me
