Guests waves at train during the opening ceremony of NEAT
Gotthard Base Tunnel in Erstfeld.
The world's longest tunnel officially opened today, with the
trailblazing rail passage under the Swiss Alps aiming to ease transit through
the heart of Europe.
With political unity on the continent shaken by a massive
influx of migrants and the looming threat of Britain's EU departure, Swiss
president Johan Schneider-Amman said the tunnel would "join the people and
the economies" of Europe.
He spoke before the 57-kilometre Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT)
made its ceremonial first run with European leaders on board.
The passengers included German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
While the tunnel was entirely funded by non-EU member Switzerland,
the bloc's transport commissioner Violeta Bulc has hailed it as "a
godsend" for the continent.
It runs from Erstfeld in the central canton of Uri, to Bodio
in the southern Ticino canton.
Travel through the Alpine region, by rail or by road, requires
taking a zigzag and undulating route.
The Gotthard Base Tunnel was designed to offer a better
option for both private travellers and commercial freights.
When the full service opens in December, the tunnel will
shave the train journey from Zurich to Milan in northern Italy down to two
hours and 40 minutes, roughly an hour less than it currently takes.
It should also make rail freight more efficient -- partly by
supporting heavier cargo, which should reduce the number of smoke-spewing
lorries on the roads, in turn improving traffic and curbing pollution.
The number of daily rail passengers is expected to increase
from the current rate of 9,000 people to 15,000 by 2020, according to the Swiss
federal railway service.
The rough design for a rail tunnel under the Gotthard Pass
was first sketched by Swiss engineer Carl Eduard Gruner in 1947.
But bureaucratic delays, concerns over the cost and other
hurdles pushed back the start of construction until 1999.
The work took 17 years at a cost of more than 12 billion
Swiss francs (USD 12 billion, 11 billion euros).
According to the Swiss rail service, it also took 43,800
hours of non-stop work by 125 labourers rotating in three shifts to lay the
tunnel's slab track.
The ambitious venture was largely made possible by technical
advances in tunnel-boring machines, which replaced the costly and dangerous
blast-and-drill method.
The primary machine used to make the Gotthard tunnel was
roughly 410-metres long and functioned like a mobile factory.
It cuts through rock and throws the debris backwards while
simultaneously placing the pre-formed segments of concrete that form the shape
of the tunnel.
A separate system grouts the pieces together. With its
official opening, the GBT has surpassed Japan's 53.9-kilometre Seikan tunnel as
the world's longest train tunnel.