Swissinfo reports that the last few meters of rocky breed have been broken through the Swiss miners. Thus, both parts of the railway tunnel, which are built under the Alps, are connected.
It is also noted that this engineering structure, which takes place under the country’s south of the country, reached a length of fifty -seven kilometers, thereby being a long tunnel in the world.
One of the high -ranking representatives of Alptransit, which is the contractor of this project, thanked all people gathered for the celebration of this event for the work they did, and also honored the memory of eight passers that died during the construction of the tunnel.
A little later, sad speeches were replaced by a more optimistic part of the event. So the director specifically invited for this occasion arranged in the new tunnel a performance in the form of a musical show, accompanied by light special effects.
After the presentation, a priest arrived at the scene, consecrated the result of the labor of workers and engineers for a long service, and Moritz Lenberger, the Swiss Minister of Transport, noted that the builders managed to meet both the budget and the deadlines allotted to create the tunnel.
Note that the total cost of this project is approximately ten billion euros. According to the planned plans by 2017, the new tunnel will be fully equipped and ready to launch into operation. If a combination of circumstances is more successful, then its discovery may occur in 2016.
It is so expected that thanks to the new railway tunnel under construction, which will pass not as usual-in the mountains, but under them, the time spent on the path from Zurich to Milan will be reduced by somewhere by one and a half hours. In addition, the government also hopes that many companies of the company will now prefer to transport their goods along a new “podgorny” road, thereby unloading the already loaded roads leading from the Apennine Peninsula to the center of the European continent.
It is noteworthy that during the work by the builders from the mountain, twenty -four million tons of rock were extracted from the mountain. In volume, this is approximately equal to the contents of the five pyramids of the Cheops.
In conclusion, we note that before the construction of the new railway tunnel, the Japanese Sikan was considered the longest tunnel in the world. The Dean of the latter is more than fifty four kilometers.