Have a look at some of Switzerland’s most cutting-edge advancements

The birthplace of scientific marvels such as CERN Laboratory’s Large Hadron Collider and home to the European headquarters of the United Nations, Switzerland is frequently at the forefront of global innovation– check out some of the country’s shining achievements in the transport sector!

Cargo Sous Terrain

Pioneering Swiss logistics company Cargo Sous Terrain plans to build an underground freight transport system in order to relieve rail and road networks. The company envisions the system as an innovative solution to overloaded freight infrastructure, freeing up space for increased passenger service.

Tunnels will be excavated 164 ft beneath the hilly Swiss Plateau, and will be roughly 20 feet wide. Cargo will be loaded and unloaded via an automated system powered by electromagnetic induction, and the unmanned transportation vehicles are alleged to be capable of constant travel at roughly 19 miles per hour. The first stretch of the underground system will span 41.4 miles to connect Zurich with the northern towns of Härkingen and Niederbipp, and is estimated to be complete by the early 2030s.

The cost of executing the first phase alone was estimated at 3.55 billion Swiss francs at 2016. The projected costs have increased nearly tenfold since then– to roughly 30 billion Swiss francs. CST executives counter with statistics which illustrate “that the volume of goods transport in Switzerland will increase by up to 31% until 2050. The current traffic routes alone are not capable of handling this growth.” 

So– why create this system, rather than reinvest that money in road and rail? 

“Unlimited expansion of the transport infrastructures is not possible,” explains CST’s website. “Cargo sous terrain is an innovative solution with an infrastructure intended solely for goods transport. It relieves the load on rail and road at critical points.” The system will also be capable of collecting waste and recyclables. CST is also purported to be environmentally friendly– the system is powered by 100% renewable electricity and will reduce heavy traffic on highways by up to 40%.

Civilians weigh in

Many comparisons have been drawn between Cargo Sous Terrain and The Boring Company spearheaded by Elon Musk– the infrastructure of which, in one Reddit user’s opinion, went from “Blade Runner buses lowered down from the street on giant elevators, then whisked autonomously through tunnels until they are raised back up by another elevator,” to “Take an escalator down to a sad subway station where a taxi driver drives you through a tunnel.”

So– what do Swiss civilians think of this proposed system?

Dominique, 34, who has a Master’s degree in Transportation Engineering and has a decade of combined experience working in road and rail, says plainly that CST’s model will not meet Switzerland’s transportation needs. “I was one of the early and, back then, lonely critics of CST,” says Dominique, who goes on to list a plethora of potential downsides: the pods are too small and there is “too much dead weight” per pod,

He goes on to explain that this seemingly novel system has, in fact, been done before: “It’s a reinvention of the single goods network [or “Stückgutverkehr”] that we had until the 70s. Every town had a small freight depot and was served daily by a freight train. That system didn’t work out, because motorways made road transport very cheap.”

Dominique affirms that the money would be better allocated to improvements in road or (preferably) rail, stating that this would allow for the transport of “not only goods that can be transported via CST, but also people, bulk items, dangerous goods, and even auto trains.”

BLS Car Trains

The Swiss are frequently innovative when it comes to logistics and transportation. The  Lötschberg Car Train allows drivers to load their vehicle in the town of Kandersteg onto a freight system that travels through the mountains, cutting the 40-minute drive down to just 15 minutes. At the end of their journey, passengers park their car and transfer to a shuttle which takes them to the centre of Zermatt– a car-free town!

BLS also runs a 15-minute car train between the central Swiss towns of Realp and Oberwald, and even a 20-minute international car train between Iselle di Trasquera in Italy to Brig in southern Switzerland. There is also an express train which combines the Lotschberg and Italian routes. All four car trains run 365 days per year and operate several times per day.

Rhätische Bahn operates an additional car train between Scuol–Tarasp and Chur.

Americans can now experience a car train on their own soil. Amtrak’s daily ‘Auto Train’ runs daily from Washington, D.C. to Orlando, FL, and can also accommodate small boats and motorcycles.

Gotthard Base Tunnel

Another marvel of Swiss infrastructure is the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which sits 8,040 feet beneath the Alps and is the world’s longest railway tunnel. The tunnel has the capacity to allow 260 freight trains and 65 passenger trains to pass per day.

The tunnel, constructed in 2016, sits about 500 metres below the original Gotthard Tunnel, which was constructed in 1882. At that time, it was the longest tunnel of any kind in the world. The new tunnel enables rail traffic to traverse a flatter, straighter route which allows trains to travel at higher speeds, carry more cars, and use less energy.

The tunnel typically facilitates both freight and passenger travel. Unfortunately, a derailment took place in the tunnel in 2023– although no one was injured, the tunnel is not expected to resume operations until September 2024.

Running parallel to the base tunnel is the Gotthard Road Tunnel, the world’s deepest traffic tunnel. At the time of its 1980 construction, which was response to Switzerland’s automobile boom, it was also the longest road tunnel in the world. It is now the fifth-longest.

The road tunnel was built, in part, to relieve the transport load carried by the aforementioned car trains.

A second road tunnel is planned for Switzerland, with an estimated cost of CHF 3 billion. Preliminary construction on this tunnel began in 2020.