Americans should congratulate the Swiss and other Europeans on the June 1 inauguration of the record-setting 35-mile-long Gotthard rail tunnel under the Alps. ADVERTISING Americans should congratulate the Swiss and other Europeans on the June 1 inauguration of the record-setting
Americans should congratulate the Swiss and other Europeans on the June 1 inauguration of the record-setting 35-mile-long Gotthard rail tunnel under the Alps.
It is now the longest and deepest rail tunnel in the world, surpassing Japan’s 33-mile-long Seikan tunnel and the 31-mile-long Channel Tunnel between France and the United Kingdom. Financed by the Swiss, it cost $12 billion and took 17 years to complete. The challenging project took 2,600 workers to complete; nine died in the construction, a low number in comparison to its scale.
Apart from the speed of north-south European transit, facilitating trade the Gotthard will make possible, it is also considered to be a major contribution to the environmental health of the Alps. It is estimated it will replace with high-speed rail traffic more than 1 million truck trips per year.
The importance of its inauguration was underlined by Swiss Federal President Johann Schneider-Ammann, who presided, but also by the presence of French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Some 600 actors participated in the frolics accompanying the ceremony.
Americans have to wonder why we can no longer perform such feats, particularly looking at the state of our infrastructure, education and health care systems.
The Federal Reserve poured some $3.7 trillion into the American banks in quantitative easing to try to shake the U.S. economy out of the recession that began in 2007. That didn’t work, except to fatten up the bankers. Crippled by our political system and general Washington dysfunction, it has been many decades since the United States built anything of the magnitude of the Swiss Gotthard, the Japanese Seikan or the Channel Tunnel.
It is possible the only such project the Republican Congress would approve would be adding former President Ronald Reagan’s head to Mount Rushmore.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
