- [Narrator] For more than a decade,
crews have been drilling tens of miles
through the base of the Alps,
all because they need to solve a traffic bottleneck here.
The final goal?
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?
To understand, look at this map.
These are the nine main trade corridors
that make up the European Union's
Trans-European Transport Network.
The TEN-T 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 TEN corridor.
As the longest route in the TEN-T,
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 two trillion one in Italy.
In 2021 alone, Italy exported around $78 billion
worth of goods to Germany
and imported almost 89 billion's 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 on this particular issue.
- [Narrator] Those three member states
are Austria, Italy, and Germany.
But the Italian Deputy Prime Minister
says that these limits 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 Innsbrook 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 that 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 TEN-T 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 TEN-T 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 roots is vital,
and after delays, it's still at least a decade away.