Gotthard: ten years of the world’s longest rail tunnel
The Gotthard Base Tunnel celebrates its tenth anniversary on Monday. Opened on June 1, 2016, the 57-kilometre tunnel has almost doubled demand for passenger traffic on this route, according to the Swiss federal railways.
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Ten years after its inauguration, the Gotthard Base Tunnel has profoundly transformed rail links between northern and southern Switzerland.
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Since it opened, 169,000 passenger trains and 276,000 freight trains have travelled through the world’s longest rail tunnel. With the opening of the Ceneri base tunnel in 2020, the journey time between Zurich and Lugano has been reduced to one hour and 53 minutes, around 50 minutes less than before the tunnel opened. Demand on the Gotthard route has almost doubled in ten years, according to a press release published on Monday.
Freight traffic has also benefited from this infrastructure. The volume transported rose to 24.2 million tonnes in 2025, compared with 17.8 million tonnes on the old route in 2015.
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Adapted from French by AI/ts
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