Name: The $11B Tunnel That Could Save One of Europe’s Busiest Mountain Corridors | WSJ Breaking Ground
Uploaded: 2025-01-19T09:28:11.000Z
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For more than a decade, crews have been drilling tens of miles through the base of the Alps.

Transition words & phrases

All because they need to solve a traffic bottleneck here.

An $11 billion megaproject called the Brenner Base Tunnel.

The project will ultimately create the longest underground railway connection in the world.

But building a tunnel over 30 miles long that cuts through one of the largest mountain ranges is neither easy nor cheap.

And there's still nearly a decade before it's ready for people and goods to pass through it.

So why is Europe taking on this massive project?

These are the nine main trade corridors that make up the European Union's Trans-European Transport Network.

The 10T is an infrastructure plan the EU began developing back in the 1990s.

And the Brenner Base Tunnel, or BBT, is at the heart of the Scandinavian-Mediterranean 10 Corridor.

As the longest route in the 10T, this corridor will link the ports up here in Scandinavia to those all the way down in the Mediterranean.

And along the way, it will connect the $4 trillion economy in Germany to the $2.1 trillion in Italy.

In 2021 alone, Italy exported around $78 billion worth of goods to Germany and imported almost $89 billion worth from Germany.

Some of that trade will happen on the BBT.

But to cross that area now, there's only a slow railway, built back in the 1860s, and this main highway, the Brenner Pass.

This highway has since become one of Europe's busiest mountain corridors.

Around 50 million tons of goods move across the highway each year.

And just in 2022, 2.5 million trucks passed through it, accounting for over 30% of all freight crossing the Alps.

So in an effort to alleviate some of that traffic and lower emissions in the area, Austria has imposed emergency measures restricting transit trucks from driving at night and transporting certain goods that are particularly suitable for rail transport.

The country now also limits the number of trucks to, on a busy day, around 200 per hour.

These restrictions have become controversial.

The European Commission upholds its stance that...

It is first and foremost up to these three member states to come to solutions on this particular issue.

Those three member states are Austria, Italy and Germany.

But the Italian deputy prime minister says that these limits increase the risk of a infringe on the right to free movement of goods within the EU, while the Austrian Ministry for Climate Action says that litigation will not solve the traffic problem on the Brenner Corridor, no matter the outcome.

Italy did not respond to requests for comment, but at the root of this is Austria's desire for a modal shift from highway to railway.

That's where this $11 billion tunnel comes back in.

The BBT is designed to reduce both the distance and the time it takes to travel by train from Fortezza in Italy to Innsbruck in Austria.

Here you can see the proposed route compared to the current railway system.

Unlike the old one, which goes up and winds around the mountain, the BBT plans to cut through the Alps at a speed around 100 miles per hour.

This will cut the freight route from 105 minutes down to just 35.

And the European Commission also expects this tunnel to increase the rail capacity from 260 trains per day to 660.

Since rail transit generally emits less CO2 than transit trucks, the BBT could also reduce some of the pollution.

But all of this is contingent on the tunnel's completion, which is a massive engineering feat.

Currently, five construction sites are in operation, with three in Austria and two in Italy.

The most recent developments are here, in the southernmost construction site.

Because of the proximity to the Isarco River, crews first needed to stabilize the terrain.

From these shafts, crews injected liquid nitrogen into the soil through a tube.

This nitrogen froze the water present in the soil and in turn stabilized the terrain so the excavation for the tunnel could be completed.

And now they're working to restore the area to its original state as much as possible through a process called renaturation.

They've made progress on this, but slowly.

It took this single construction site nine years to get to this point and cost over $315 million.

And while this lot is nearly finished, the larger project is not expected to be completed until 2032, which means there's still almost 10 years until this tunnel can even begin to ease the pressure at the Brenner Pass.

Those familiar with the situation at the Brenner Pass, between Austria and Italy, do not expect the restrictions and proposed legal action to derail the tunnel project.

Italy and Austria are still co-financing 50% of this megaproject in the Alps, with the remaining half financed by the EU.

And experts note the potential impact expands beyond trade, since the Brenner has historically served as a military connection.

In World War II, Germany and Italy cemented their partnership here.

And German troops and supplies passed through the Brenner before Allied bombing efforts cut off the supply lines, an effort said to have shortened the war.

In the modern day, the 10T is still seen as a way to ensure swift and seamless movement of military personnel, materials, and assets.

And in 2017, the EU announced that the 10T would extend into Eastern Europe, including Eastern Partnership member states like Armenia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Commission doubled down on this intent by putting forward an updated action plan on military mobility.

But for all of these plans to come to fruition, the completion of the BBT and its connections to other routes is vital.

 And after delays, it's still at least a decade away.