WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]
top | item 10465597

Gotthard Base Tunnel

97 points| lelf | 10 years ago |en.wikipedia.org | reply

48 comments

order
[+] peterburkimsher|10 years ago|reply
The software control SCADA system for the Gotthard Base Tunnel is called WinCC OA, made by ETM Siemens. Full disclosure: I did a summer job for them in Eisenstadt, Austria in 2012, and my dad uses the same software at CERN.

ETM made software called PVSS, and it was renamed to WinCC OA when ETM got bought by Siemens. The previous Siemens software, WinCC, was the victim of the Stuxnet worm. Hopefully ETM's is a bit more secure!

This is public knowledge, not insider information: http://www.etm.at/index_e.asp?sname=div_nw_0209_gbt_e.asp

[+] scmoore|10 years ago|reply
There's a (kind of cheesy) documentary about the construction of the tunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaTN_R1b00I

I skipped through some of the slower-paced sections, and mostly just gawked at the machinery.

[+] TrevorJ|10 years ago|reply
Thanks for the link. Cheesy or no, I love these kinds of docs, wish there were more of them out there.
[+] dgorges|10 years ago|reply
Gotthard Tunnel

The Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) is a railway tunnel through the Alps in Switzerland expected to open on 2 June 2016.

- Length: 35.4 mi

- Cost: $10.3 billion

- Construction: 1996 - 2016 (est)

Bay Bridge

The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge (known locally as the Bay Bridge) is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California.

- Length: 4.46 miles

- Cost: $6.5 billion

- Construction: 2002 - 2013 (est)

[+] jtzhou|10 years ago|reply
The GBT is 94 miles, right? I think the Swiss achieve these costs through economies of scale. There are tunnels throughout the country so they can achieve greater efficiencies at 5-10x of those in specific metro areas in the US. I remember when they were debating a tunnel under Tysons Corner in Virginia, the largest office park in the Washington-Baltimore area, the estimate came in at $800 miles for 4 miles and was considered cost-prohibitive. It'd be great to bundle a number of these projects together to achieve the efficiencies of scale.
[+] brudgers|10 years ago|reply
Construction is expensive. Even the bargain priced tunnel is about $65.000 a foot or $200.000 per meter. And unlike the bridges it just handles one vehicle width in each direction.
[+] Swizec|10 years ago|reply
How does average construction worker pay in Bay Area compare to Germany/Switzerland?
[+] TrevorJ|10 years ago|reply
And the bay bridge has some serious defects already.
[+] DiabloD3|10 years ago|reply
I remember when they started this project. This is seriously maybe the greatest work of engineering on Earth.

Now only if the US can match this and finally get that bullet train network up and running...

[+] abduhl|10 years ago|reply
Why is this "seriously maybe the greatest work of engineering on Earth"?

It looks like straight forward rock tunneling to me. The alps have good rock that the industry has a lot of experience mining through. Don't get me wrong, the length is impressive but the diameter (10m) is not crazy nor is the ground bad.

[+] phantom784|10 years ago|reply
Originally, there was going to be a station partway through the tunnel. It would've been 800 meters underground - the deepest in the world. It was scrapped as uneconomical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porta_Alpina

[+] Animats|10 years ago|reply
The station was actually built, but only as an emergency facility and to help with construction. It's reachable from the surface, but requires a horizontal trip on a mine train and then 800m vertical on a mine hoist.

Stopping trains there interferes with traffic too much.

[+] legulere|10 years ago|reply
> it will be the world's longest and deepest traffic tunnel

yet the linked list of the worlds longest tunnels lists two longer metro tunnels in china

[+] Someone|10 years ago|reply
That list also mentions a "Longest railway tunnel excluding urban metro lines with intermediate stations", so I would guess it is in that category.

Makes some sense; a metro tunnel with stations every kilometer or so will not feel like a single tunnel, even if it was engineered as one.

[+] jessriedel|10 years ago|reply
Hmm. Maybe they're drawing a distinction between metro/subway and normal (freight) trains?
[+] thom_nic|10 years ago|reply
TFA doesn't mention whether or how far the project is over budget or behind its original schedule. Does that mean it is on schedule and on budget? If so that's amazing.

I'm used to constantly hearing stories like the "Big Dig" here in the US, sometimes it seems like every non-trivial civil works project fails massively fail on both criteria.

[+] piquadrat|10 years ago|reply
Originally, the cost of the complete AlpTransit project (of which the Gotthard is part of) was estimated to be about 14.5 billion Swiss Francs (CHF), in 1998. It ended up costing about 18.7 billion CHF, so quite a bit more. The whole project changed quite a bit in the mean time, though (e.g. added security and environmental measures).

source (in German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Eisenbahn-Alpentransversa...

[+] bosdev|10 years ago|reply
The shocking thing to me is that they are completing the project AHEAD of schedule!
[+] cozzyd|10 years ago|reply
I've sometimes wondered if a Reno to somewhere in western Sierras base tunnel would make sense in the US. Probably not nearly as much of a bottleneck to justify.
[+] ohitsdom|10 years ago|reply
I think self-driving vehicles will make projects like this even rarer. The two benefits this project achieves are:

1. Safer travel on rails instead of trucks (accidents & environmental)

2. Faster transport between regions (saving 1 - 1.5 hrs)

Safety will become almost a non-concern with self driving cars. Work still needs to be done to minimize environmental impact, but electric cars are coming on strong.

Faster transport times will be a tougher sell when we are actually free to be productive when traveling. With an automated driving system, vehicles become offices/lounges.

Self driving cars don't completely address these concerns, but they make the $10 billion price tag hard to justify. I'm not saying this project isn't justified, I just love examining the impact self-operating vehicles will have on our future.

[+] syncsynchalt|10 years ago|reply
Not so much in this particular case — the purpose of the tunnel is to reduce heavy truck traffic through environmentally sensitive areas. The tunnel is explicitly built to satisfy a goal of transforming truck freight to rail freight. The fast passenger time is only listed as a side benefit.
[+] rayiner|10 years ago|reply
This tunnel as well as its predecessor is mainly for rail travel. Trains are already far safer than cars (and there is no reason to believe self-driving cars will be safer than trains), and already let you work en route. Also, this tunnel is for freight rail too, and self-driving cars or trucks aren't really an alternative to that either.

Also: productivity in the office > productivity in a train >> productivity as the passenger in a car. I say that as someone who commutes about three hours a day by train and Uber.

[+] this_user|10 years ago|reply
Self-driving cars still need a way to pass that specific mountain range. Right now there is the old rail tunnel, the road tunnel and the mountain pass. The latter usually closes in autumn as do many others in the Alps. The road tunnel has a length of 16.9 km and two lanes. All of this creates a huge bottleneck. So unless someone invents a flying car, tunnels will still need to be built in regions like this.
[+] nerfhammer|10 years ago|reply
This route is mostly for freight, not commuting.

I'm sure very few people tried to commute across this section of the Alps by car before this.