Delays around Gotthard tunnel likely until 2005
Traffic on Europe's main north-south road axis, via the Gotthard tunnel in Switzerland, returned to normal at the weekend after two days of tailbacks. But similar delays are to be expected until 2005.
Max Friedli, director of the federal transport office, said on Sunday there was not likely to be any ease in the traffic flow on the main A2 road to the tunnel for at least the next four years.
“We’ll just have to get used to the sight of long lines of lorries over the next few years,” Friedli said.
At one stage on Friday, more than 850 trucks were blocked on the road heading towards the Chiasso frontier post on the border with Italy.
In an interview with the Swiss newspaper, “SonntagsBlick”, Friedli said long delays were inevitable and would continue to “get worse until such time as measures to transfer freight on to the rail network begin to bear fruit.”
Friedli has called on lorry drivers to be patient. “We were never going to be able to wave a magic wand and transfer heavy goods from road to rail overnight,” he told the paper.
But the director of the Swiss Road Transport Association, Carlo Schmid, said that the government could not just “sit around and watch while the situation deteriorates”.
Schmid told the “SonntagsZeitung” newspaper that urgent measures needed to be taken and issued a warning to the Swiss authorities: “Never underestimate the anger of truck drivers.”
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