{"id":42499,"date":"2016-12-11T13:45:43","date_gmt":"2016-12-11T13:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/?p=42499"},"modified":"2016-12-11T13:45:43","modified_gmt":"2016-12-11T13:45:43","slug":"worlds-longest-tunnel-opens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/worlds-longest-tunnel-opens\/","title":{"rendered":"Worlds longest tunnel opens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0Regular rail service through the world&#8217;s longest tunnel began onSunday, carrying passengers deep under the Swiss Alps from Zurich to Lugano.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The famed Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) had a ceremonial opening in June, attracting European leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande for its maiden ride.<\/p>\n<div id=\"m_-5344694712903279261gmail-inarticle_wrapper_div\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0The Swiss national rail service (SBB) had announced that <span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_12866881\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Sunday<\/span><\/span> would mark the start of normal commercial traffic through the 57-kilometre (35-mile) GBT, which took 17 years to build, at a cost of over 12 billion Swiss francs.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-42501\" src=\"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/89854447_89854446.jpg\" alt=\"Swiss Alps\" width=\"526\" height=\"296\" srcset=\"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/89854447_89854446.jpg 640w, https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/89854447_89854446-500x280.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 526px) 100vw, 526px\" \/><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Swiss news agency ATS reported that the first regular passenger train to use the GBT pulled out of Zurich at <span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_12866882\"><span class=\"aQJ\">6:09 am<\/span><\/span> (0509 GMT) and arrived in Lugano at <span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_12866883\"><span class=\"aQJ\">8:17 am<\/span><\/span>, with the tunnel passage shaving a full 30 minutes off the previous travel time for the same route.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;It&#8217;s Christmas,&#8221; SBB Chief Andreas Meyer was quoted as saying by ATS after the journey was over.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-42502\" src=\"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Gotthard-base-tunnel-Switzerland-by-Niedax-2.jpg\" alt=\"Swiss Alps\" width=\"642\" height=\"361\" srcset=\"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Gotthard-base-tunnel-Switzerland-by-Niedax-2.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Gotthard-base-tunnel-Switzerland-by-Niedax-2-500x280.jpg 500w, https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Gotthard-base-tunnel-Switzerland-by-Niedax-2-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 642px) 100vw, 642px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The ambitious GBT project has won praise across Europe for its pioneering efforts to improve connectivity from Rotterdam to the Adriatic.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Swiss funded tunnel was largely made possible by technical advances in tunnel-boring machines, which replaced the costly and dangerous blast-and-drill method.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Regular rail service through the world&#8217;s longest tunnel began onSunday, carrying passengers deep under the Swiss Alps from Zurich to Lugano. The famed Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) had a ceremonial opening in June, attracting European leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande for its maiden ride. \u00a0The Swiss national rail service [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3,2],"tags":[20086,20084,17680,20083,20082,20085,20087,20081],"class_list":["post-42499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nri","category-politicalnews","category-top-stories","tag-57-kilometre","tag-french-president-francois-hollande","tag-german-chancellor-angela-merkel","tag-gotthard-base-tunnel","tag-swiss-alps-from-zurich-to-lugano","tag-swiss-national-rail-service","tag-swiss-news-agency","tag-worlds-longest-tunnel-opens"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/hg.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}