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Comment by harryf | Hacker News Reader

So how much time approximately will be saved vs the existing routes?

In addition to the other replies, I want to point out that a major reason for the tunnel's existence isn't just to reduce travel times, but to provide an alternative way for freight to cross the mountains besides using trucks over the roads, which are dangerous and make a lot more pollution. Even if transit times for passengers don't decrease that much, this will be judged a success if it gets a lot of freight trucks off the road.

It cuts the Zürich-Milan journey time for passenger trains by about an hour (from 173 to 111 minutes) accelerating train trips from Germany/Switzerland to Italy significantly.

I don't get this. Zurich is in Switzerland. I don't think even with this tunnel opening we will be getting from Zurich to Milan in under 2 hours... Are your numbers wrong?

Edit: we will be looking at journey times of about 170 minutes from Zurich to Milan AFTER the tunnel opens.

Yeah - I've done that journey and have in mind that it takes about 4 hours right now from Zürich to Milan by train (with various stops)

The TGV Paris-Lyon takes less than 2 hours to cover a substantially longer distance.

The terrain geography in Switzerland doesn't allow you to drive constantly with 300km/h, in France it's a different story

Could you double-check the Zürich-Milan journey time?

The article says "... the journey time for travellers between Zurich and Milan will be reduced by an hour to two hours and 40 minutes."

I cross-checked that with http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/switzerland-s-gotthard-tra... ("reducing the journey times between Zurich, Switzerland, and Milan, Italy, from just over four hours to two-and-a-half hours") and http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2026369... ("the journey time of three hours and 40 minutes from Zurich to Milan on the Cisalpino tilting train will be cut by an hour".)

You can see these all give a time of over 150 minutes using the tunnel, not 111 minutes. They all agree it's a savings of about an hour.

I heard numbers of 45 minutes less for Zurich-Milan. Maybe your number already includes the Ceneri Base Tunnel[1], to be opened in 2020?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceneri_Base_Tunnel

Indeed you are right - I got my number from 24heures.ch, and it is comparing the number before both tunnels vs. the time after both are open:

http://www.24heures.ch/suisse/Le-tunnel-de-base-du-Gothard-r...

But the real goal is to get trucks off their roads. Hopefully this happens.

Self-correction: It cuts the Zürich-Lugano journey time from 173 to 111 minutes rather than Zürich-Milan (which still takes longer). Though it does cut journey times for the latter by an hour too.

MagnumOpus is right, GBT will save ~1hr of travel, check out this infographic where you can see the comparison of stage coach, train, car and new train via GBT: http://interactive.swissinfo.ch/infographic/Gotthard_Strecke...

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