Workshop BBT September 29 - 30, 2017

The Brenner Base Tunnel
Range of application and comparison of technical cultures and advanced operational methods

Under the Brenner Pass, the longest railway link in the world is being built: the Brenner Base Tunnel. The Brenner Base Tunnel stretches for about 55 km between Innsbruck train station and Fortezza train station. Together with the existing Innsbruck bypass, the tunnel will reach 64 km and reduce the travel time for freight and passenger traffic significantly. The Brenner Base Tunnel is part of the TEN-T SCAN-MED corridor and allows for overcoming the natural barrier of the Alpine ranges. For this reason, the EU is prioritising this tunnel among its infrastructural projects.

The construction of the tunnel can be seen as a training, because the Italian and Austrian contracting authorities had to face several organisational, administrative, economical, legal and technical problems that were unique and have never been dealt with in other infrastructural projects. The transnational character of the project, the double Italian-Austrian legal framework, different technical cultures as well as different operational and organisational practices led to constructive comparisons between Austria and Italy and culminated in achieving best results.

This workshop is held to give an overview of the work progress status and to enter into the details of the different drilling methods used for the construction of the Brenner Base Tunnel: drill and blast method and TBM tunnelling. The Workshop is divided into two half -days and detailed in the enclosed programme.