The Betuwe Line is a 143 km long, two-track railroad dedicated to freight, linking Rotterdam harbour to the German border. With the upcoming completion of the New Rail Link through the Alps programme, the journey time from Zurich to Milan will be cut by an hour by 2020. With a route length of 57 km, the Gotthard Base Tunnel is the world’s longest and deepest rail tunnel and – together with Lötschberg and Ceneri Base tunnels - represents a significant step towards increasing the competitiveness of rail for the transport of goods and passengers on the corridor. ![]() The Gotthard Base Tunnel, situated beneath the Swiss Alps, opened on 1 June 2016. Capacity upgrades as well as better multimodal connections in the ports are also necessary. In addition, the access routes to the Swiss tunnels in EU territory (Karlsruhe - Basel and Swiss border - Milan/Novara) need to swiftly progress, as the Gotthard and Monte Ceneri tunnels will create a flat trajectory for rail freight through the ecologically sensitive Alps as of 2019/20. A better connection between the Belgian and Dutch networks with the German network is needed, particularly between Emmerich and Oberhausen. The main bottlenecks exist in Germany and Italy where capacity upgrades are required. Rather, the main challenges for the corridor constitute bottlenecks emanating from increased traffic flows. The Rhine-Alpine is a mature corridor and as such, does not have major missing links. This multimodal corridor incorporates the Rhine River as the key inland waterway in Europe, as well as important tunnelling projects in Switzerland, including the world’s longest and deepest rail tunnel, the Gotthard Base tunnel. The corridor runs through the so-called “Blue banana”, which includes major EU economic centres such as Brussels and Antwerp in Belgium, the Randstad region in the Netherlands, the German Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Neckar regions, the Basel and Zürich regions in Switzerland and the Milano and Genoa regions in Northern Italy. Altogether, more than 70 million people live, work and consume in the catchment area of the Rhine-Alpine Corridor, which is also home to a number of leading manufacturing and trading companies, production plants and distribution centres. ![]() The regions it encompasses count among the most densely populated and economically strong in Europe. It connects key North Sea ports of Belgium and the Netherlands with the Mediterranean port of Genoa. The Rhine-Alpine Corridor constitutes one of the busiest freight routes in Europe. ![]() CEF support to Rhine-Alpine Corridor - May 2020ĬEF support to Rhine-Alpine Corridor - April 2018
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