Switzerland gets a loo-o-o-ong railroad tunnel; metro New York/New Jersey gets a writeoff
Breaking through on October 15, 2010
Switzerland, with a population of fewer than 8 million and a genuine commitment to keep rail travel and goods transport alive and thriving, has completed the excavation for the new Gotthard Base Tunnel, at 35.4 miles the world’s longest railway tunnel. With the precision of a Swiss watch, the deviation from the plan was 8 cemtimeters horizontally and 1 centimeter vertically. The conversion is 2 1/2 centimeters per inch, so that deviation is miniscule.
Close to 20 years ago, Swiss voters approved the $10 billion tunnel by nearly a two-thirds majority, and it didn’t take long for workers to begin boring it under the Alps. The tunnel, which is designed for two railroad tracks, took 12 years and eight workiers’ lives to bore from first bite of a drill in 1996 to breakthrough on October 15. I was in Europe at the time, and this engineering and construction triumph was covered on live television and made headlines. When trains start running in 2017, it will cut one hour off the current 3 1/2-hour trip between Zurich and Milan. One portal is in the German-speaking canton of Graubünden (Grisons) and the other in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino.
Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, a major tunnel project between Manhattan and New Jersey appears dead. In a metro area of 20 million or so, a shorter but comparably priced tunnel project was killed by slash-and-abandon New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who pulled the plug on the $8.7 billion project that has been in the planning stages for some 20 years. Christie’s reason? New Jersey had committed $2.7 billion for this tunnel plus cost overruns that were expected to run as high as $3.5 billion, and Christie claims that his state lacks the funds to cover them. New Jersey is already in hole for $350 million (or is it $500 million?) for the tunnel that won’t happen.
Expected cost overruns? The Swiss would be astonished. Heck. They could have built half-a-dozen tunnels under the Hudson in that time and probably pretty close to budget. After all, if they can drill a 35.5-mile tunnel wide enough for two trains and bore within single-digit inches, they’d most likely complete the dinky Hudson River tunnel on time and on budget too.
I can attest to the wonder of Swiss trains after my visit last month. They’re timely, convenient and usually quite scenic. And clearly New Jersey needs some Swiss engineers!