A look into the tube: This is where Europe’s freight traffic is supposed to roll. The Brenner Base Tunnel lies at the center of a corridor that stretches from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean.
Image: STRABAG/BBT-SE/Jan Hetfleisch
It should one day be the longest railway tunnel in the world and relieve the Brenner Pass – the bottleneck of freight traffic. But it will be a long time before the technically demanding project is ready. The German feeder alone is ten years behind.
Acar drivers have their own way of looking at things. For them, the Brenner autobahn with the spectacular Europa Bridge towering south of Innsbruck is the most important high-speed route across the Alps. No sooner had it been completed in 1974 than the transport of goods pushed massively from the railways to the roads. It has remained so to this day. With annual growth rates of five percent, however, the collapse is programmed. In 2019, around 2.5 million trucks with almost 40 million tons of freight crossed the 1371 meter high Brenner Pass. 60-kilometer traffic jams on the Inntalautobahn up to the Irschenberg are not uncommon.
This should come to an end in the future. But when exactly, no one knows at the moment. The only thing that is clear is that it will be some time before the Brenner Base Tunnel, as the heart of the so-called Scandinavia-Mediterranean Corridor, will be able to assume its intended role. The reason for this are delays that are part and parcel of an infrastructure project worth billions, for better or for worse. Especially when it comes to digging the longest railway tunnel in the world. Another reason for this is the fact that a reliable supply in the north is foreseeably missing. The planning of the route around Rosenheim is still in progress. The planners have just brought a fifth variant into play for the four possible “rough routes” that have been discussed so far.