Michael Rehbock-Sander - Member of the board and manager of tunnelling projects

The 57 km long Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) will be the worlds longest railway tunnel. It presents the main part of the new Swiss Railways routes crossing the alps on the Gotthard line. The project will provide a vital link between the high speed rail networks of Germany and Italy and produce a much-needed reduction in the heavy road traffic over the Alps by switching it to the rails. The GBT will be used by passenger trains traveling at maximum speeds of 200 to 250 km/h and by heavy freight trains. Initial preparatory work started in 1996, and the GBT is scheduled to be opened in 2015. In order to achieve an acceptable overall construction time, three intermediate points of attack were conceived to divide the GBT into five construction sections. Nearly 90% of the entire drive can be headed by using tunnel boring machines (TBMs). On all the construction sites work is proceeding around the clock. On April, 2006, about 92.3 km of the total length of 153.4 km of tunnels, shafts and passages had already been excavated Amongst these lots the paper focuses on the TBM headings and the experience already got in the 50 km of the Amsteg and Bodio TBM drives. Some special technical aspects regarding the TBM will be described more detailed in the presentation.

Gotthard Base Tunnel, tunnel boring machine, hard rock tunnelling, deep tunnels