Porta Alpina
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This article or section contains information about a planned or expected future railway station. It may contain information of a speculative nature and the content may change dramatically as the construction and/or completion of the railway station approaches, and more information becomes available. |
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Porta Alpina is a proposed railway station to be built in the middle of the 57 kilometre long Gotthard Base Tunnel which is currently under construction in southern Switzerland. Porta Alpina would be located near a crossover between the northbound and southbound train running tunnels, and would be linked to the surface via elevator shafts nearly one kilometre long, employing shafts built near the village of Sedrun for the tunnel construction. Porta Alpina is viewed both as a potential tourist attraction in its own right, and as a useful transport link connecting the north/south Gotthard railway line with the east/west Rhaetian Railway/Matterhorn-Gotthard Railway, which would link to the elevator by means of local buses to Sedrun station (MGB) and Disentis station (RhB), providing the fastest public transport link between Zurich and the southeastern canton of Graubünden.
The Swiss Federal Government gave a favourable response to the Porta Alpina project proposal in the summer of 2005, and construction is likely to proceed. Construction costs are estimated at 40-50 million Swiss francs, with annual operating costs of 2.5 million francs. The station would open in 2015 when the Base Tunnel is scheduled to come into service.
[edit] External links
- Brochure for the Porta Alpina project (PDF file, in German).
- The official website (in German)
- Article on SwissInfo
