Rhine-Alpine Freight Corridor
The Rotterdam to Genoa axis, Europe's busiest north-south chain of barge, rail and road.
Overview
The corridor bundles Rhine barges, alpine rail tunnels and parallel motorways into one supply chain spine. Its centerpiece is the Gotthard Base Tunnel, opened in 2016 at 57 kilometers, the longest rail tunnel on earth, built to shift alpine freight from trucks to rail, which Swiss policy taxes and caps. Hundreds of thousands of trucks still cross the Alps by road yearly. A 2023 freight derailment closed the base tunnel for months, pushing cargo back onto the old line and highways and demonstrating how tightly Europe's industrial geography hangs on a handful of crossings.
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