Grand tunnel vision

There is no reason why elephants cannot be placed in a freight train if they were to cross the Alps in a subterranean journey made possible by modern engineering  expertise. The famous journeys the pachyderms made as a war corps through the Alps for the great Carthaginian military strategist Hannibal Barca would certainly have been more arduous and, in fact, only a few elephants survived the march in the 3rd century BCE to Italy.

Today, the Gotthard tunnel, the world’s longest and deepest rail tunnel, promises a far cleaner environment and a lifeline for the Alpine region by replacing a million lorries carrying goods. The 57-km, twin-bore Gotthard, which surpasses Japan’s 53.9-km Seikan rail tunnel and the Channel Tunnel, which completely revolutionised how people travel by linking France and the UK under the English Channel, is yet another feather to the cap of human thinking.

As a work in progress, this one was phenomenal as it took 20 years, $12 billion and nine lives, and there is some way to go yet before freight begins passing through. Switzerland’s fame for precision engineering may be tested in popularising such environmentally-sensitive movement for a whole range of goods, from Italian wine to German cars, more quickly.

The tunnel also stresses European unity, which in fact may have inspired French President Francois Hollande to get his message across about the UK referendum this month during the tunnel inaugural when he said European unity is good for Britain too.