By The Austrian construction site H41 Sill-Pfons Gorge, and at the construction site of the Eisack Undercrossing, near Fortezza, where digging work ended in December 2023 and the renaturation process is currently undergoing with the planting of 50,000 trees, every year hosts BBT’s Open Day for the Brenner Base Tunnel project and this year’s event took place on the 8th June 2024.
About the project
Stretching from the construction lot of the Eisack Undercrossing in the south to the state border with Austria, the Mules 2-3 construction site (Lot H61) is the largest construction site of the entire BBT project.
Two of the three TBMs (Serena, the TBM that has completed excavation of the exploratory tunnel up to the state border; Virginia, the double-shield TBM that has completed excavation of the Italian section of the East Line Tunnel) have already reached the Brenner Pass: Flavia – the third TBM and the second double-shield TBM – is just over 2 km away from the state border and it’s going to complete excavation of the Italian section of the West Line Tunnel.
Building of 39.8 km main tunnels and 14.8 km of exploratory tunnel, the Trens emergency stop with its access tunnel, as well as the by-passes connecting the main tubes every 333 m, are the contents of this project. All excavation work on Italian side are going to be completed, following that Mules 2-3 is finished.
Operating of Hinterrigger plant, which is located at the south portal of the exploratory tunnel and half of its 30,000 m2 is covered, is up to Isocell Precompressi SpA.
The plant produces up to 250 precast concrete segments per day, re-using approximately 30% of the spoil from the excavation of the tunnel.
In order to transporting the segments through the exploratory tunnel to the TBMs that install them for the final lining of the tunnels in Lot Mules 2-3, they are then loaded onto the site trains.
The current tunnelled distance of BBT’s tunnels is more than 70% , whereas excavation work has commenced on the central lots of the northern and southern access sections of the future railway infrastructure. For ensuring an effective transfer of heavy traffic from road to rail by the opening date of the Brenner Base Tunnel in 2032, including the gradual completion of the access sections, important progress has been made from an infrastructural and operational point of view.
Considering that the Brenner Corridor Platform (BCP) is working on regulatory obstacles that force trains to stop at borders to change drivers and sometimes also locomotives, it limits the potential of rail. BCP is working to harmonise the national regulations of Italy, Austria and Germany in order to achieve seamless cross-border rail transport between Munich and Verona.
On 6 June during the BCP plenary meeting it was announced that on the existing double-track lines between Munich/Trudering-Rosenheim and Ponte Gardena-Trento full capacity utilisation will be achieved by 2030.
