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World's longest and deepest rail tunnel to open in Switzerland

bbc.com

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Re: World's longest and deepest rail tunnel to open in Switzerland

#21

Post by wolfgke »

elcapitan wrote: post #14
captainpiggies wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"delivered on time" It's even better. They are about one year ahead of schedule.

There's a million reasons to love Switzerland, and now there's 57km more of it. This is amazing. Once the new Berlin airport is finished in about 5-10 years, I'll fly down there to celebrate.

> Once the new Berlin airport is finished in about 5-10 years, I'll fly down there to celebrate.

Rather if the new Berlin airport is ever finished...

In other words: If you want to celebrate, rather fly down to Berlin now and celebrate the opening of the Gotthard tunnel in Berlin.

Re: World's longest and deepest rail tunnel to open in Switzerland

#22

Post by ptaipale »

WalterBright wrote: post #5

This is $12.5b and 17 years for a 35 mile tunnel through solid rock. Seattle's transit plan is $50b, 25 years, and laying tracks on grade. Probably about the same number of miles. http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/24/st3-draft-plan-over...

However, building passenger transit in an urban area is a very different thing, even if a long underground tunnel is a challenge in itself.

Mining through solid rock is not really that expensive these days. But when building metropolitan transit, arranging traffic around of an existing population is not easy, and building transit stations is an expensive business.

Making a tunnel through solid, hard rock is in any case cheaper than making a tunnel through non-solid earth which needs to be supported for every inch all the time.

Regarding cost of mining solid rock: in fact, where I live, I think in the construction of underground train line, the actual cost of mining is pretty much offset by the price for sale of rock matter, which is then used for claiming land from sea to construct new housing. It is fairly silly over here because we have a low population and lots of land, but when the city claims new land, it can build there and sell it without purchasing it from existing owners, and all the increase in land value from zero (in fact no land at all) goes to the pockets of the city, and the pockets that the city chooses.

Re: World's longest and deepest rail tunnel to open in Switzerland

#25

Post by captainpiggies »

arrrg wrote: post #16
captainpiggies wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"delivered on time" It's even better. They are about one year ahead of schedule.

Ahead of schedule based on an adjusted schedule during construction. They are slightly behind the originally planned schedule (a couple years). Obviously this is still a very well executed project overall.

Well obviously it's part of the Requirement Engineering process to adjust the schedule when the requirements change.

Re: World's longest and deepest rail tunnel to open in Switzerland

#28

Post by anon4711 »

adventured wrote: post #26

I was very surprised to read how little Swiss labor (14%) was used in its construction. Most of the labor was Italian (29%): http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-30/swiss-made...

It's not that surprising, it is? I would expect Italian wages to be considerably lower.

Re: World's longest and deepest rail tunnel to open in Switzerland

#29

Post by elcapitan »

wolfgke wrote: post #21
elcapitan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a million reasons to love Switzerland, and now there's 57km more of it. This is amazing. Once the new Berlin airport is finished in about 5-10 years, I'll fly down there to celebrate.

> Once the new Berlin airport is finished in about 5-10 years, I'll fly down there to celebrate. Rather if the new Berlin airport is ever finished... In other words: If you want to celebrate, rather fly down to Berlin now and celebrate the opening of the Gotthard tunnel in Berlin .

I know, I live there ;)

Re: World's longest and deepest rail tunnel to open in Switzerland

#30

Post by ojii »

hoppi wrote: post #18

"Nine workers died during the work." Although on-time or early and within budget, it is still a dangerous job to do. That is 0.346% of the total workforce (2600).

A better metric is probably "deaths / km" instead of % of workforce.

Also, while those nine deaths are tragic, we've come a long way from the roughly 200 lives the old 15km tunnel took.

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