Swiss Railroads Plan for Traffic Deluge

Switzerland, sandwiched among France, Austria, West Germany and Italy, anticipates a huge increase in foreign traffic after the single European market opens borders and boosts interstate trade from 1992 and beyond.

Swiss roads now carry 75% of all traffic between northern Europe and Italy. Switzerland wants to shift these vehicles off its roads and instead carry them “piggy-back” by rail.

To encourage rail traffic the Swiss are drilling a giant tunnel through the 6,938-foot Gotthard mountain. The 30-mile railway tunnel will be the key element in a $4.5-billion project to ease transport between northern and southern Europe.

The New Alpine Rail Axis--just a bit shorter than the English Channel tunnel planned between Britain and France--should be ready to ease the flood of traffic by 2010.

It will form part of a network of fast rail links across Western Europe and will allow more than 600 trains a day to cross the Alps in each direction--double present capacity.

Travel times will also fall. The Basel-Milan journey, for example, will be almost halved to less than three hours.

Freight Total to Double

The Bern government estimates that by the year 2020 freight transport between northern Europe and Italy will almost double from last year’s level of nearly 83 million tons.

Tiny Switzerland is crisscrossed with overused roads packed with crawling trucks that pump out fumes. It already has more than 600 rail tunnels--one of them through the Gotthard where the newest tunnel is scheduled.

This nine-mile Gotthard tunnel was opened more than a century ago, yet today carries more than 80% of the rail freight that passes through the country.

An 11-mile road tunnel--Europe’s longest--was built through the Gotthard in the early 1980s, linking Switzerland’s German-speaking north and Italian-speaking south. It eased travel--especially in winter, when the mountain road is often closed by deep snow--but it was not enough.

Switzerland, although not a European Community member, is one of Europe’s busiest traffic junctions. Some 57 million cars pass through each year and the Swiss themselves own 3.4 million cars--one for every other citizen.

Major Political Issue

Traffic has become a major political issue in recent years with Bern under pressure from environmental groups, which oppose highway expansion and want trade conducted by rail, and from Italy and West Germany, who want the Swiss to build more roads to ease congestion.

“Switzerland is not in a position to practice an isolated transport policy. If we fail to build an efficient rail network, our motor ways will have permanent traffic jams,” Swiss Transport Minister Adolf Ogi said recently.

So the new rail tunnel is their answer--no increase in road-building and pollution but improved access through the heart of Europe.

Ogi calls it an “investment for Europe.” With two-thirds of Swiss trade conducted with the European community, Ogi has probably invested well.