World’s longest underground rail tunnel in the Alps nears completion

Every year, more than 120 million tourists visit the Alps to ski, hike and take in views of some of the tallest and most expansive mountain ranges in Europe. But few ever get to see what lies within the mountains.

Inside the Brenner Base Tunnel — an ambitious rail connection, jointly funded by Italy, Austria and the European Union — it’s a stark, surreal scene: pitch-black corridors, walls of jagged stone and the constant hum of massive boring machines cutting through the earth. Construction crews in hard hats and fluorescent vests move by headlamp, carving a passage that’s as eerie as it is monumental.

Giorgio Malucelli, an experienced excavator and operations manager on the Italian side of the project, described it as familiar terrain, at least to those in his line of work.

“It doesn’t feel that strange once you’ve been doing this job,” he said. “Of course, it has dangers.”

Those risks include tunnel collapses, flooding and accidents involving heavy machinery. But Malucelli said his crew has been fortunate. And earlier this month, they reached a historic milestone.

For the past 15 years, Malucelli and his crew on the Italian side and a separate group of workers on the Austrian side have been digging towards each other, working to create the project’s pilot tunnel — the first transnational tunnel connection between Italy and Austria. On Sept. 18, they finally met in the middle.

“We actually met with our colleagues from Austria,” he said. “And that was a very defining moment for our project. [It was] the very first time we broke through at the border.

At the tunnel’s border breakthrough, dignitaries from both countries gathered to celebrate what Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called a “revolution in European transportation.”

The tunnel, she said, will reduce travel time between towns near the border from 80 minutes to just 25 and dramatically cut truck traffic over the congested Brenner Pass — a major source of pollution in Alpine communities.

Although the pilot tunnel has been completed, the full project is still a long way from being operational.

Crews are now focused on widening the main passages using enormous tunnel boring machines, affectionately nicknamed by workers as Lilia, Vilma and Olga.

“We always have women’s names,” said Malucelli. “So, we’re waiting for these girls to come through.”

After the girls do come through and the boring is complete, workers will lay track, build support systems and eventually install the rail lines that will carry high-speed trains under the Alps. If all goes to plan, the Brenner Base Tunnel will open to rail traffic in 2032.