Right now, in the Greatest Country on Earth, the so-called “high-speed” Acela service reaches its maximum operating speed of 150 mph for just 18 miles of its 452-mile journey from Boston to Washington, D.C.
Well, now in the heart of Switzerland, modern high-speed trains will soon zoom through the Alps — yes, literally through the middle of them — at a speed of 155 mph for 35 miles. Of course, Europe has thousands of miles of high-speed track — facilitating train travel at almost 200 mph — but what makes the opening of Switzerland’s Gotthard Base Tunnel so funny, for an American at least, is that shortly the United States will even have less high-speed rail track than that which runs through the middle of giant mountains in Europe. In other words, we have less high-speed rail track than a single European tunnel.
Yes, after 17 years and investing $12 billion, Switzerland — with its French, German and Italian neighbors — celebrated the opening of the world’s longest and deepest rail tunnel on Wednesday. (The Swiss have created a super-cool app to explore the tunnel, if you’re interested in taking a virtual journey.)
The world’s longest and deepest rail tunnel opened in Switzerland on Wednesday, nearly seven decades after it was first proposed and 17 years after construction began with a blast in the main shaft.
The 35-mile, or nearly 57-kilometer, twin-bore Gotthard Base Tunnel clears the way for a high-speed rail link under the Swiss Alps that the Swiss government says will revolutionize freight and passenger transportation.
The current four-hour trip between the economic hubs of Zurich and Milan will be cut by about an hour.
The ultimate goal is a seamless high-speed rail trip from the Dutch city of Rotterdam, Europe’s busiest port, in the north, to Genoa, on Italy’s Tyrrhenian Sea coast, in the south.
Violeta Bulc, the European Union’s transportation commissioner, attended the tunnel’s opening, calling the development “a milestone in European rail history and a major contribution of Switzerland to bringing Europe and Europeans closer together.”
The new tunnel will not only improve passenger rail links between the North and South of Europe, but will take nearly a million diesel-belching trucks a year off of European roads — improving the local environment and contributing to the global fight against climate change.
After testing ends this year, around 260 freight trains and 65 passenger trains are expected to travel through the two-tube tunnel each day, reaching speeds approaching 100 miles an hour for freight and 125 miles an hour with passengers. Passenger trains are expected to eventually reach 155 miles an hour.
Goods currently carried by a million trucks a year will eventually be moved by trains instead.
(Oh, and there was even an incredible interpretive dance presentation at the opening ceremony. You gotta see this!)
Back in the United States, we can’t even find the political will to replace the dangerously-outdated century-old tunnels — less than a mile long — connecting Manhattan and New Jersey.
And, guess what? The plan to replace these tunnels is slated to take at least 15 years and cost $24 billion— twice the cost of Europe’s 35-mile tunnel through the middle of the Alps.
Now, Hillary and Bernie and Trump can talk all they want about “investing in infrastructure,” but the reality is that the rest of the world has already passed us by — decades ago. We don’t need to “invest in infrastructure,” we need an “infrastructure revolution,” if we are to even begin to prevent our roads, bridges and tunnels from collapsing, let alone achieving progress on the scale of the Europeans and East Asians.