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

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

#31

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.

It's especially about expertise. These guys work in teams and move from one tunnel project to the other. You can't just hire inexperienced work force for such projects.

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

#32

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 ca…

Really? The Cross rail project in London cost only 2bn more than the Swiss project but does exactly that, create an entirely new line under the whole of London, which is ridiculously hard to dig under (or so I've heard). Why the hell does it cost $50bn for you?

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

#33
post #23

> The completed tunnel travels up to 2.3 km below the surface of the mountains above and through rock that reaches temperatures of 46C. Is this solely because of the pressure or is there something else (say water?)? Also, I think they forgot degrees (°).

Radioactive decay.

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

#34

Is it really the deepest, doesn't it just happen to have a lot of mountain on top of it? Other tunnels, by reference to sea level, are probably deeper?

There's a difference between the altitude (the height of an object or point in relation to sea level or ground level) of something and the depth below the ground under which it travels. Deepest in this case, in relation to the Gotthard tunnel, refers to how far under the surface of the mountain it is, from the article, "The Gotthard tunnel runs 2.3 km under the mountain at its deepest point" - note that this makes no reference to altitude.

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

#35
post #13

You can check a small animation[1] of the rail traffic from this upcoming weekend when the first passenger trains will pass through the tunnel http://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/?hms=08:40:00&day=2016-06-... [1] http://imgur.com/cN3HKPp?v=2

So how much time approximately will be saved vs the existing routes?

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

#36
post #35
post #13

You can check a small animation[1] of the rail traffic from this upcoming weekend when the first passenger trains will pass through the tunnel http://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/?hms=08:40:00&day=2016-06-... [1] http://imgur.com/cN3HKPp?v=2

So how much time approximately will be saved vs the existing routes?

It cuts the Zürich-Milan journey time for passenger trains by about an hour (from 173 to 111 minutes) accelerating train trips from Germany/Switzerland to Italy significantly.

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

#37
post #35
post #13

You can check a small animation[1] of the rail traffic from this upcoming weekend when the first passenger trains will pass through the tunnel http://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/?hms=08:40:00&day=2016-06-... [1] http://imgur.com/cN3HKPp?v=2

So how much time approximately will be saved vs the existing routes?

[deleted]

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

#38
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And, more often than not, these requirement changes are used as excuses for extending the deadline so that project ends up being done "on time". I've worked in management on multi-year waterfall projects and this is how this game is played.

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

#39
post #3

"... longest and deepest rail tunnel ..." and "... delivered on time and within budget ..." Only in Switzerland, I guess. :) I wish there were better write ups of how the planning for this came together and what differs from other somewhat similar huge projects.

Only in not so corrupt countries..
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