Italian Infrastructure Minister Visits Brenner Base Tunnel

By TBM Staff March 9, 2020

The Brenner Base Tunnel, an iconic project of sustainable mobility in Europe, received Italian Infrastructures and Transport Minister Paola De Micheli at the southernmost part of the construction site where Salini Impregilo is working on the Isarco River lot with Strabag, Consorzio Integra and Collini Lavori.

Officials from the client, BBT SE, as well as Rete Ferroviaria Italiana Chief Executive Maurizio Gentile and representatives of the European Commission, which is financing part of the project, also took part in the visit. Work on the lot is 70% completed.

Salini Impregilo and its consortium partners are excavating four tunnels under the river and two tunnels further north. It is a complex project because it involves excavating under a river, the A22 highway, the SS12 state road, and a railway, including the one between Munich and Verona.

Once the entire project is completed, the Brenner Base Tunnel will be the longest railway tunnel in the world at 64 km, part of a corridor of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) of railways connecting Scandinavia with the Mediterranean designed to improve transport across the continent. In addition to the southernmost lot, Salini Impregilo is also working on the Tulfes-Pfons lot on the Austrian side of the project. Other companies involved in the Brenner Base Tunnel include Astaldi on the Mules 2-3 lot. Astaldi is part of Progetto Italia, a plan by Salini Impregilo to consolidate the fragmented construction industry in Italy.

Salini Impregilo is working on a number of projects that will become part of the Scandinavia-Mediterranean corridor. It is involved in the high-speed railway line between Naples and Bari, focusing on sections Napoli-Cancello and Apice-Hirpinia. It is also working on part of a railway between Palermo and Catania in Sicilia, a section called Bicocca-Catenanuova.

Along the Rhine-Alpine corridor that will connect Genoa with Rotterdam, Salini Impregilo is leading work on the Terzo Valico dei Giovi, a high-speed/high-capacity railway of 53 km along the Genoa-Turin-Milan axis. Outside Italy, it is working on a section of a high-speed railway planned between Istanbul and the border with Bulgaria. In the United States, it is doing the early works on what will become the first real high-speed railway in the country between Dallas and Houston, Texas.