
World's longest and deepest rail tunnel to open in Switzerland - sschueller
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36423250
======
tellarin
"... longest and deepest rail tunnel ..." and "... delivered on time and
within budget ..."

Only in Switzerland, I guess. :)

I wish there were better write ups of how the planning for this came together
and what differs from other somewhat similar huge projects.

~~~
Annatar
That is typical for Switzerland, and it is because for the Swiss, "planning is
50% of the work". They invest the time up-front in planning and thinking about
how whatever it is they are doing is going to work, and once they either ran
proof of concept tests or thought it through, they set the machinery in
motion. There will even be a clearly documented process for modelling the
process, and a process for getting the logistics squared away! It's such a
great way to work, I'm a big fan of this work methodology, because it is
oriented towards reaping long term profits with interest, be those profits
with interest financial or intellectual.

~~~
CaptainZapp
I'd wager that there's another reason why big projects are usually pretty
successful in Switzerland; time - and budget wise:

Political legitimacy, signed off by popular referendum.

When you look north to our German neighbors, with a comparable work ethos and
certainly a fair understanding of engineering you see projects go south again
and again. Be it Stuttgart 21 (the new train station), or that horrible mess
that is the airport Berlin Brandenburg.

Such projects usually require popular support via referendum in Switzerland.
That means that if it is voted through this implies that the necessary capital
investments are spoken for and that the project is legitimized via public
support.

This also means that if the government changes they can't just massage budget
positions and siphon funds of such projects for political expedience, or other
reasons.

Legitimacy also avoids public resistance against the projects as it happened
in Stuttgart and which almost killed the project
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21#Debate_and_opposi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21#Debate_and_opposition)).

That's not to say that all big projects in Switzerland work like a charm. But
political legimacy and honest budgeting that comes with it seem major factors
that such projects are succesful more often than not.

~~~
bogomipz
Really there's a referendum on all big projects? Is this governed by a certain
threshold i.e above amount X it gets put to referendum? That's pretty awesome
if so. In the US this done in a back room away from public view it has various
names - pork barrel politics, horse trading, etc. And such allocations are
often tacked onto other legislation that might have nothing to do with the
project.

~~~
1wd
There are different forms.

On a cantonal level there is (among others) a "finance referendum". This may
be mandatory or optional depending on the canton. Optional means the project
is only actually put to a referendum if an eligible group demands it. An
eligible group may be a political party, a certain number of voters, certain
interest groups, etc.

For example in the Canton of Zürich there is an optional referendum on
decisions of the Cantonal Council on new non-recurrent expenditure of more
than 6 million francs or new recurrent annual expenditures of more than
600'000 francs. To actually put such a decision to a referendum requires
either 3000 voters (public referendum), 12 municipalities, the city of Zürich
or the city of Winterthur (municipal referendum), or 45 Cantonal Council
members (cantonal referendum).

On a federal level there is no "finance referendum". It has been proposed, but
most political parties are against it since it could hinder the Federal
Council in its freedom of action and delay or even block important
investments. But there's a mandatory referendum for all constitutional changes
and certain other things like joining supranational communities etc. and a
optional referendum for all federal laws and certain other things like
international treaties etc. The optional referendum requires 50'000 voters (or
eight cantons, but this only actually happened once).

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vasile
You can check a small animation[1] of the rail traffic from this upcoming
weekend when the first passenger trains will pass through the tunnel

[http://maps.vasile.ch/transit-
sbb/?hms=08:40:00&day=2016-06-...](http://maps.vasile.ch/transit-
sbb/?hms=08:40:00&day=2016-06-04&x=8.7744&y=46.61882&time_multiply=100&zoom=10)

[1] [http://imgur.com/cN3HKPp?v=2](http://imgur.com/cN3HKPp?v=2)

~~~
harryf
So how much time approximately will be saved vs the existing routes?

~~~
MagnumOpus
It cuts the Zürich-Milan journey time for passenger trains by about an hour
(from 173 to 111 minutes) accelerating train trips from Germany/Switzerland to
Italy significantly.

~~~
planetjones
I don't get this. Zurich is in Switzerland. I don't think even with this
tunnel opening we will be getting from Zurich to Milan in under 2 hours... Are
your numbers wrong?

Edit: we will be looking at journey times of about 170 minutes from Zurich to
Milan AFTER the tunnel opens.

~~~
lmm
The TGV Paris-Lyon takes less than 2 hours to cover a substantially longer
distance.

~~~
vasile
The terrain geography in Switzerland doesn't allow you to drive constantly
with 300km/h, in France it's a different story

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piquadrat
There's a great 360° video on Youtube that shows both the tunnel as well as
the Gotthard massif through which the tunnel leads. It's in German, but the
visuals are impressive on their own.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDSCtXvL51o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDSCtXvL51o)

~~~
tajen
OMG I just understood what you meant with 360! You can swipe to the direction
you want, like in Quicktime VR, but animated! I didn't know Youtube made it
possible! The video was just showing the rails, I thought it was boring until
I understood the concept.

~~~
jakub_g
Thanks for the comment.

BTW Make sure to open the video in Chrome or Opera, the 360 thing does not
work in Firefox

~~~
j4_james
FWIW, it works for me in Firefox on Windows 10. Click and drag with the mouse,
clicking on the arrows, or swiping on a touchscreen all work fine.

~~~
icebraining
Same here with FF 46 on Ubuntu.

~~~
jakub_g
Ok turns out I had webgl disabled in Firefox in about:config. False alarm.

------
rplnt
> The completed tunnel travels up to 2.3 km below the surface of the mountains
> above and through rock that reaches temperatures of 46C.

Is this solely because of the pressure or is there something else (say
water?)?

Also, I think they forgot degrees (°).

~~~
danieltillett
Radioactive decay.

~~~
jacquesm
Geothermal heat, more likely, or did I miss something?

~~~
goodcanadian
Geothermal heat is due to radioactive decay in the earth's core, so you're
technically both correct.

~~~
jacquesm
Radioactive decay is a _component_ of geothermal heat, but it is not all of
it, quite a large chunk of it is simply residual heat from time of the
formation of the planet.

~~~
danieltillett
I am not sure how much residual heat is left after 4 billion years, but at the
near surface all[1] the heat is due to radioactive decay.

1\. Ok most :)

~~~
jacquesm
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget)

"The flow of heat from Earth's interior to the surface is estimated at 47
terawatts (TW) and comes from two main sources _in roughly equal amounts_ :
the radiogenic heat produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes in the
mantle and crust, and the primordial heat left over from the formation of the
Earth."

~~~
danieltillett
From the wiki article you quote.

 _Most of the heat flow from the thicker continental crust is attributed to
internal radiogenic sources, in contrast the thinner oceanic crust has only 2%
internal radiogenic heat._

In the Swiss alps most of the heat is coming from local radioactive decay.

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WalterBright
This is $12.5b and 17 years for a 35 mile tunnel through solid rock. Seattle's
transit plan is $50b, 25 years, and laying tracks on grade. Probably about the
same number of miles.

[http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/24/st3-draft-plan-
over...](http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/24/st3-draft-plan-overview/)

~~~
ptaipale
However, building passenger transit in an urban area is a very different
thing, even if a long underground tunnel is a challenge in itself.

Mining through solid rock is not really that expensive these days. But when
building metropolitan transit, arranging traffic around of an existing
population is not easy, and building transit stations is an expensive
business.

Making a tunnel through solid, hard rock is in any case cheaper than making a
tunnel through non-solid earth which needs to be supported for every inch all
the time.

Regarding cost of mining solid rock: in fact, where I live, I think in the
construction of underground train line, the actual cost of mining is pretty
much offset by the price for sale of rock matter, which is then used for
claiming land from sea to construct new housing. It is fairly silly over here
because we have a low population and lots of land, but when the city claims
new land, it can build there and sell it without purchasing it from existing
owners, and all the increase in land value from zero (in fact no land at all)
goes to the pockets of the city, and the pockets that the city chooses.

~~~
usrusr
> Regarding cost of mining solid rock: in fact, where I live, I think in the
> construction of underground train line, the actual cost of mining is pretty
> much offset by the price for sale of rock matter

Any chance that you are living near
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drammen_Spiral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drammen_Spiral)
?

I would have dismissed your claim as totally absurd had I not read about this
gem of an improbable building project before!

~~~
ptaipale
No, not Norway, but Finland. However we have similar solid and hard bedrock,
and the same economic logic where rock chips are needed in construction.

------
hoppi
"Nine workers died during the work."

Although on-time or early and within budget, it is still a dangerous job to
do. That is 0.346% of the total workforce (2600).

~~~
shawabawa3
0.346% of the population over 17 years. Wouldn't be surprised if it was less
than the national average death rate

~~~
groupmonoid
You're right. Death rate is about 0.8%, to be compared to 0.02% here (40 times
less). Of course, this does not account for the difference in the age
distribution of workers vs the national population.

------
adventured
I was very surprised to read how little Swiss labor (14%) was used in its
construction. Most of the labor was Italian (29%):

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-30/swiss-
made...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-30/swiss-made-
foreigners-built-world-s-longest-rail-tunnel-chart)

~~~
anon4711
It's not that surprising, it is? I would expect Italian wages to be
considerably lower.

~~~
m_st
It's especially about expertise. These guys work in teams and move from one
tunnel project to the other. You can't just hire inexperienced work force for
such projects.

------
m_st
Check out this amazing 360° video about the tunnel with your smartphone (or
use the mouse to drag the view).
[http://www.srfcdn.ch/srf/news/gotthard360/index.html](http://www.srfcdn.ch/srf/news/gotthard360/index.html)

------
stinos
_Now they will able to do so more quickly, more safely, and more cheaply_

And important as well: likely more friendly to the environment. It's not _all_
about economics.

------
andy_ppp
It seems as if Europe has most of the worlds great infrastructure projects
going on right now, with this and Cross Rail. Is there anything of similar
scale going on in the US, China or India?

EDIT: Answering my own question...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transport_megaprojects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transport_megaprojects)

and

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects)

~~~
tobltobs
The irony is that this tunnel is part of bigger project, a fast north to south
rail connection from Germany to Italy. But Germany nor Italy made any progress
until today. Just north of the border the high speed trains have to slow down
to 60km/h for about half an hour, because this part of the railway track is
still from the sixties. The same on the south in Italy. And it doesn't look
like this will ever change. Those railway projects don't have enough prestige
for politicians.

~~~
andy_ppp
Ha, brilliant - I always thought it was just the UK that had this problem. End
to end high speed rail is hard and embarrassment on behalf of governments is a
good motivating factor.

------
jimmcslim
Is it really the deepest, doesn't it just happen to have a lot of mountain on
top of it? Other tunnels, by reference to sea level, are probably deeper?

~~~
igravious
There's a difference between the altitude (the height of an object or point in
relation to sea level or ground level) of something and the depth below the
ground under which it travels. Deepest in this case, in relation to the
Gotthard tunnel, refers to how far under the surface of the mountain it is,
from the article, "The Gotthard tunnel runs 2.3 km under the mountain at its
deepest point" \- note that this makes no reference to altitude.

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troyvit
Actualy the world's longest and deepest rail tunnel is already open somewhere.
It just won't hold that distinction once this other one opens in Switzerland.

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troyvit
Actually the world's longest and deepest rail tunnel is already open somewhere
... it just won't be once this new tunnel opens.

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thallian
german livestream from the opening today (swiss national television):
[http://tp.srgssr.ch/p/srf/embed?urn=urn:srf:ais:video:c49c1e...](http://tp.srgssr.ch/p/srf/embed?urn=urn:srf:ais:video:c49c1e29-faa0-0001-1613-d70e9a9042a0)

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advertising
that opening ceremony tho...

