The Gotthard Base Tunnel ten years on

The Gotthard railway tunnel (pictured is the northern portal) is the longest in the world, at 57.1km. Keystone / Alexandra Wey

Has the Gotthard Base Tunnel fulfilled expectations, shortening travel times through the Alps and bringing more passengers and freight onto trains? Here are some figures on the world’s longest railway tunnel, ten years after it was built.

The opening ceremony of the Gotthard Base Tunnel on June 1, 2016, drew a host of European leaders – Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and, of course, Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann – underscoring the importance of the project in linking the north and south of the continent.

Ten years on, the Gotthard rail tunnel – at 57.1km the longest in the world – has become a cornerstone of freight and passenger transport across the Alps. But has it really lived up to expectations, particularly when it comes to shifting freight traffic from road to rail?

Illustration: Kai Reusser, Swissinfo

16,400 passengers a day

The number of people travelling through the Gotthard by train has almost doubled in ten years. In 2025 the average was 16,400 a day, compared with 9,000 in 2015, according to the Swiss Federal Railways.

The new base tunnel has also led to an increase in the number of passengers travelling to Italy. The Federal Railways does not provide specific data on passenger trends on the Milan–Zurich stretch. However, it indicates that the number of people journeying to Italy on long-distance trains (international travel) rose by around 50% between 2016 and 2023, from 1.6 million to 2.3 million.

Demand fell slightly in 2024 “owing to various construction projects”, according to the Federal Railways. It should be noted that, after a train derailed in August 2023, one of the two lines making up the base tunnel remained closed for over a year.

+ Gotthard train crash report notes ignored warning signals

International travel to Italy started to pick up again in 2025, with around 2.14 million passengers, up 6% from the previous year.

Derailed carriages in the Gotthard Base Tunnel, September 6, 2023. Keystone / Urs Flueeler

155 passenger and freight trains a day

In contrast to the rising passenger figures, the actual number of trains running through the new tunnel has fallen. In 2025 there were an average of 155 trains a day: 66 passenger and 89 freight trains. Ten years earlier, 174 trains passed through the old Gotthard tunnel daily, divided equally between passenger and freight services.

Today’s trains are, however, longer than those that plied the old mountain line up to 2015. They have more carriages or consist of double-deckers. This is because they no longer have to “climb” the Alps and tackle steep gradients and tight bends.

>> The Gotthard is much more than just a hole in the mountain:

Zurich to Milan in three hours 17 minutes

One of the main objectives of the Gotthard Base Tunnel was to reduce travel times across the Alps. Today, trains run at around 200km/h, almost twice as fast as in the days of the old tunnel.

Passengers boarding the direct train in Zurich arrive in Milan three hours and 17 minutes later, barring any delays or unforeseen circumstances. Ten years ago, the journey took more than four hours. In addition to the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the Ceneri Base Tunnel (15.4km) in Ticino, which opened in September 2020, has helped to cut travel times. 

However, this is still a far cry from the roughly two-hour journey time envisaged in 1992External link, when Swiss voters approved the New Rail Link through the Alps (NRLA) – which included the construction of the Gotthard and Monte Ceneri base tunnels. “From a structural point of view, a travel time of just two hours is not possible,” Federal Railways spokesman Patrick Walser wrote in an email to tvsvizzera.

The Federal Railways’ aim is to shorten the trip between Zurich and Milan to around three hours. “Based on what we know today, this won’t be possible until the 2030s at the earliest,” Walser said. To achieve this, he explained, structural upgrades would be necessary between Chiasso and Milan, as well as the completion of the Zimmerberg Base Tunnel between Zurich and Zug.

Nearly 18 million tonnes of freight a year

Longer trains also mean more goods being transported by rail through the Gotthard Base Tunnel. Total freight increased from 15.3 million tonnes in 2015 to 17.9 million in 2024, according to the most recent data.

The Gotthard is thus Switzerland’s main transalpine rail axis. In 2024 69% of rail freight traffic across the AlpsExternal link passed through here. The Simplon route accounted for the remaining 31%.

960,000 lorries on the road

As for the shift of heavy goods traffic from road to rail, the expectations in 1992 – namely that the NRLA would enable “a large proportion of international freight traffic to be moved from road to rail” – have not been fully met either.

Today, around 70%External link of transalpine freight traffic in Switzerland is transported by rail. This is significantly higher than in neighbouring countries (in Austria, the figure stood at around 26% in 2024).

However, the number of heavy goods vehicles crossing the Alps remains above the 650,000 limit, which was set by law after Swiss voters approved the 1994 Alpine Initiative, calling for the mountainous region to be protected from transit traffic. The decrease in road freight traffic, noted from the early 2000s, continued after the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel but has never gone below 863,000 units (2020 figures).

In recent years, there has even been an uptick, with 960,000 lorries recorded in 2024. In a reportExternal link published in late 2025, the Federal Office of Transport noted that the shift of freight from road to rail had stalled over the previous two years. Between 2022 and 2024, the volume of transalpine rail freight traffic fell by 9.3%.

The main cause was delays on the access routes to the Swiss Alpine crossings from abroad, where work to modernise and expand infrastructure is progressing slowly. Until the access routes in Germany and Italy are completed, bottlenecks and delays will continue to reduce the attractiveness and competitiveness of rail compared to road transport, according to Swiss transport minister Albert Rösti.

An efficient rail infrastructure is essential for the effective transfer and management of traffic, the association Pro AlpsExternal link stresses. However, “infrastructure alone does not shift trucks,” the group’s director, Katrin Dorfschmid, cautions. In a recent resolutionExternal link, Pro Alps called on the government and parliament to ensure “fair framework conditions for freight transport”.

The Gotthard and other base tunnels through the Alps, combined with other instrumentsExternal link to promote the shift from road to rail, have nevertheless enabled part of the general increase in freight traffic to be absorbed. Without this infrastructure, around 800,000 more lorries a yearExternal link would be crossing the Alpine road passes today, according to the Federal Office of Transport.

1,500 passengers a day on the old mountain line

When the base tunnel opened in 2016, the old Gotthard route was not abandoned. It has since taken on a new role as a tourist attraction.

With the exception of the Federal Railways’ Gotthard Panorama Express tourist train, the scenic line has been operated by the Swiss Southern Railway since 2020. Last year, an average of over 1,500 people a day boarded trains travelling through the old Gotthard tunnel between Göschenen in canton Uri and Airolo in Ticino, according to the Swiss Southern Railway.

The old mountain line, completed in 1882, remains important to this day, offering a viable alternative if the Gotthard Base Tunnel had to be closed, according to the Federal Railways.

Ten years after its inauguration, the Gotthard rail tunnel is a cornerstone of European transport; however, its full potential has yet to be fulfilled.

Edited by Daniele Mariani. Adapted from Italian by Julia Bassam/ts