Switzerland’s Gotthard tunnel partially reopened for freight traffic, easing the bottleneck on a critical trade route across the Alps.
About 20 trains had already traveled through one of the two tubes of the tunnel by early Wednesday morning, a spokesman for Swiss federal rail operator SBB said.
The 57-kilometer Gotthard tunnel, the world’s longest railway passage, has been closed since Aug. 10 when a derailed train seriously damaged railtracks and infrastructure. The connection won’t return to full operability for several months, hindering supply chains for some Italian and German industries and forcing some transporters to partially shift their shipments to road trucks.
Transport companies have been searching for alternative freight routes since the accident. Some transporters have redirected trains via the Lötschberg/Simplon route and the Gotthard panorama route.
Those routes, though, can only be used by lighter and shorter trains, limiting capacity. And the Simplon tunnel will close on Aug. 23 for scheduled construction work, the SBB said.
(Corrects day in second paragraph)
