It happened in the early afternoon of August 10th: In the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the 57-kilometre-long pride of the Swiss railway nation, a freight train derailed and caused enormous damage in the west tube of the tunnel. The railway tunnel is immediately closed completely.
On Wednesday, the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) reported the extent of the damage for the first time informed. Accordingly, the track bed was so badly damaged in places that the repairs will take several months. A total of around eight kilometers of track and 20,000 concrete sleepers have to be replaced. “The Gotthard base tunnel is one of the safest in the world. The fact that such an accident could still happen hits us hard,” says SBB boss Vincent Ducrot.
It is still not clear how the accident could have happened. The 30 wagons had come together from five different locations in Italy and were to travel north from Chiasso. The train was checked as usual, and no defects were found. Nevertheless, 16 cars derailed.
The Gotthard Base Tunnel, opened in 2016, connects the canton of Uri with Ticino and is one of the most important Swiss transport axes through the Alps – both for people and for goods traffic. Since the tunnel has been in existence, the proportion of goods transported by road across the Alps has been falling steadily. Almost three quarters of this freight traffic now runs by rail, namely a good 28 million net tons. Almost 20 million of them drive through the Gotthard Base Tunnel, that is almost 70 percent.
Goods trains will be allowed to run again from next Wednesday
Both tubes of the tunnel have now been closed for more than a week. SBB is currently rerouting passenger trains via the Gotthard mountain route, which takes around an hour longer. Parts of the freight traffic can also switch to this so-called panoramic route, so that according to information from the SBB, Swiss domestic freight traffic largely flows.
International freight traffic, i.e. transit trains or the import-export business, has bigger problems. Articulated lorries with trailers often come here with a corner height of four meters for use. The Gotthard and the Lötschberg axis are aligned to this height, but not the Gotthard mountain route. This type of freight traffic can currently only be diverted to the Lötschberg axis, which is why freight trains are currently backing up in and around Switzerland.
The good news, which the SBB confirmed on Friday: From next Wednesday, freight trains will be allowed to run through the Gotthard Base Tunnel again, initially only through the undamaged east tube. According to the SBB, around 90 freight trains can run through the base tunnel per day – not nearly as many as before, as the daily capacity with 260 freight trains lay. In addition, around 20 trains are to run daily on the panorama route. The logistics and transport companies still have to accept detours after August 23: “So that all goods can be transported, freight trains must continue to be diverted via the Lötschberg-Simplon axis and the Brenner route,” write the SBB .
The industry was lucky in its misfortune. Italy is currently in the midst of the summer break, and the demand for goods is correspondingly low. That is likely to change again as early as next week. By then it should be clear how well the sector is coping with the partial closure of the Gotthard.
“Suddenly Switzerland is the eye of the needle”
At the moment it is not possible to quantify the extent of the restrictions, says Pascal Jenni, a member of the management board at SBB Cargo International. The SBB subsidiary has the largest market share in transalpine freight transport by rail, at almost 40 percent. Over the weekend, you can implement the time slot offers developed by SBB Infrastructure for the phase from Wednesday in your own plans. “Everything used to be based on the slots in the port terminals, but now Switzerland is suddenly the bottleneck,” says Jenni.
But apparently it does a good job in this situation, as a spokeswoman for Hupac emphasizes. Hupac, based in Chiasso, Switzerland, is one of the leading European transport companies and a major customer of SBB Cargo International. The total of 110 trains via the Gotthard axis are “good news”. Together with the alternative routes, you come to about 60 percent of the actually possible capacity in transalpine rail freight traffic. Hupac can work “just about” with that.
Good planning and agreements between the infrastructure operators in Germany, Switzerland and Italy are now important. Basically, the company praises the Swiss handling of the serious accident: “Switzerland clearly gives priority to sensitive freight traffic over passenger traffic, which is not a matter of course,” said the spokeswoman.