Swiss Celebrate Digging World's Longest Tunnel

[CommanderFrank]

The Swiss are celebrating the completion of a ten year tunnel project through the Alps. The project known as the Gotthard Base Tunnel runs for 35.4 miles under the Alps and cost a whopping $10 billion dollars. The Swiss have come a long way from just making watches.

 

[Weenis]

Pretty sweet.. but they won't be utilizing it until 2017 though. I think it would be pretty sweet to ride on, but I think the motives were primarily commercial :/

 

[precariousgray]

*longest rail tunnel

 

[Vaulter98c]

I remember watching this on tv about 8 years ago, I was like wow

Now I wanna see it work

 

[colinstu]

I remember watching this on tv about 8 years ago, I was like wow

Now I wanna see it work

Sure that wasn't a different tunnel? I swore I've watched tons of different tunnel-making shows (darn Europe)

 

[Despotes]

Amazing! Who exactly paid for it?

 

[EvilC]

You. You'll be getting the bill any day now.

 

[Chimel]

They plan to reach Chile in just under 2,600 years. Hang on, trapped miners!

 

[Tokamak]

This was on Extreme Engineering a few years back. Can get it on Netflix instant watch if you're interested. I hope they do a follow-up episode to talk about all the other problems I'm sure they encountered since then.

 

[JimmiG]

Oh great, now they're making swiss cheese out of their mountains too...

 

[OhSoCheesy]

Wasn't there a tunnel in US (maybe Chicago or something) that cost about $4Billion and was much shorter...I gotta get to google...

 

[NODE]

Oh great, now they're making swiss cheese out of their mountains too...

I had a good laugh reading that, Thanks.

 

[retali8]

It is pretty cool to see something like this but sucks that eight workers have died because of this.

 

[thefreeaccount]

Wasn't there a tunnel in US (maybe Chicago or something) that cost about $4Billion and was much shorter.

Boston's "big dig" was so expensive (15 bil+) largely because of the requirement that none of the streets or buildings above the dig site could be disrupted.

 

[matrix563]

ah yes the swiss cheese

 

[Methadras]

Boston's "big dig" was so expensive (15 bil+) largely because of the requirement that none of the streets or buildings above the dig site could be disrupted.

That whole project was nothing but pork barrel spending and there are still failures.

 

[Methadras]

What is amazing is that the connecting tunnel that broke through was within .500" of each other. That's some pretty damn amazing tolerances on this kind of tunneling.

 

[thefreeaccount]

That whole project was nothing but pork barrel spending and there are still failures.

Moving expressways underground isn't pork barrel; it's an obvious urban planning improvement that has already been done in several other major cities. Unfortunately, the requirement that no existing buildings or streets be demolished and no existing utilities/services be disrupted for any length of time pretty much doomed the project.

 

[Maxx]

Amazing! Who exactly paid for it?

IIRC, the taxpayers, to the tune of $1,300 per person.