Brenner Base Tunnel, Works Surpass Important Engineering Junction

Work on the Brenner Base Tunnel continues at a rapid pace. It includes the construction of a new railway line between Italy and Austria, which will reduce travel times between Fortezza (Italy) and Innsbruck (Austria) from 80 to 25 minutes for civil traffic and from 105 to 35 minutes for freight traffic.

This is the central infrastructure project of the SCAN-MED (Scandinavia-Mediterranean) corridor, part of the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T) system, which will improve passenger and freight transport within Europe, in this particular case it runs in the north-south direction (and vice versa), bringing closer the Mediterranean Sea and the nerve centers of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, which clearly affects Germany as well. From this standpoint, crossing the Alps is the most challenging task that the Brenner base tunnel will be able to solve, which will not only shorten and speed up the route, but also support longer freight trains (and use less energy) given the reduced grade of the railway.

The most engineeringly complex section of the infrastructure, the crossing of the Isarco River in Alto Adige (northern Italy), was completed in early December 2023.

Serious technical problems were concentrated in the narrow Isarco valley, including the intersection of the A22 motorway and State Road 12 and compaction of the soil for digging under the river. For this purpose, the compaction method used involved freezing the soil, making it possible to work while maintaining the watercourse in its natural channel. The work took eight years and was supervised by BBT (Brenner Basictunnel), with a pool of participating companies led by Webuild, including Strabag, Collini Lavori, and Consorzio Integra, involving a supply chain of 600 companies.

Once completed, the tunnel will allow passenger trains to pass at a maximum speed of 250 km/h. Completion of work worth 8.8 billion euros is scheduled for 2028.