The Brenner Base Tunnel: shifting Alpine traffic from road to rail

The Brenner Base Tunnel (BBT), located between Austria and Italy, is celebrating today in the Pfons-Brenner site (Austria) the start of the excavation of the two Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs), named Wilma and Olga. These are the last two TBMs entering into service, for achieving the BBT tunnelling. Representatives of the European Commission and CINEA attended the ceremony to celebrate this important milestone made possible thanks to EU funding.The Brenner Pass is one of Europe’s busiest mountain crossings used for freight transport. Each year, more than 2.5 million trucks, 14 million vehicles, and 50 million tonnes of goods cross the Alpine pass. The new Brenner Base railway tunnel, co-funded with €2.3 billion for four Actions from the CEF Transport programme, aims to ease congestion on the Munich-Verona route, which is part of the Scandinavian-Mediterranean Corridor that stretches from Helsinki to La Valletta.The current railway follows a route established in 1860, winding up the 1,371-metre-high mountain road with steep slopes of up to 26%. This design limits train speed and maximum load capacity, requiring at least two locomotives on the Italian side and three on the Austrian side. As a result, the existing railway is not competitive for cross-border freight or passenger transport.The new Brenner Base Tunnel addresses these issues on the most critical part of the stretch by providing a nearly flat, straight route. At 64 km, it will be the world’s longest underground...