The future and new underground transport in Switzerland

We all know that Switzerland is a mountainous country, and therefore building roads there is not cheap, both to make and to maintain. And on the other hand, transport does not stop growing, and especially logistics transport.

Some intelligent questions that someone can ask themselves are: could logistics transport be separated from the rest? And can this be simple and also ecological?

Those questions have been asked by the Swiss, and the answer has been to devise a new freight-only transport system between the main logistics centers in the country. And they have called that idea Cargo Sous Terrain.

With this project they will build a network of tunnels to link several logistics centers in Switzerland, and autonomous vehicles on rails will circulate through these tunnels at a uniform speed of 30 km/h

The entire project, a 500 km network of tunnels, is estimated to cost around 30 billion dollars, and will start with a first 70 km line between Zurich and a logistics center in Härkingen-Niederbipp. It is the red line on the lower map.

A model of the units moving along the lanes can be seen in the photo below. Pallets that are cheap and easy to put on and take off can be placed inside each unit, thus making handling cheaper by using something that is already standard in current transport.

Up to three rails of vehicles will be able to circulate through each tunnel, and there will also be three lines from the roof for sending small parcels. You can see this in the bottom photo.

The idea is reasonably simple to be practical and operational. What is costly is the construction of the infrastructure, and especially the tunnels, but today very good tunnel boring machines are available to carry out these works reasonably quickly.

With this concept, road transport would be greatly unloaded, and the construction of new roads for people would not be needed. And I am sure that in the long term freight transport becomes cheaper. And something also very important, without generating environmental pollution

An explanatory video can be seen at:  https://youtu.be/htTo-_5X8gA

I think our Swiss friends have made the right decision. I wish them the best.