Official inauguration of Gotthard base tunnel
Published June 1, 2016
A dream of politicians, traders, logisticians and engineers has come true: The Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT), a railway tunnel through the Alps in Switzerland, officially opened 1 June 2016. The length of the route is more than 57 km and there are 152 km of tunnels and passages in all. This makes it the world's longest and deepest traffic tunnel. The GBT, which runs some 600 m below the first Gotthard tunnel, can be used by standard freight trains of up to 3,600 t, unlike its predecessor. Regular commercial services will commence from December 2016 on. The investments into the project, which took around 17 years to build, amounted to CHF 12.2 billion (USD 12.27 billion). www.gottardo2016.ch
