Switzerland’s critical north-south corridor again became a pinch-point on Monday, 20 July, when queues at the Gotthard road tunnel stretched to 18 km and waiting times topped three hours. The Touring Club Suisse (TCS) warned motorists that the A2 between Altdorf and Göschenen was saturated, urging anyone heading to Italy to re-route via the Lötschberg car-train, the Simplon Pass or the Great St Bernard tunnel. The Gotthard tunnel is not just a holiday bottleneck. It carries around 17,000 trucks a day in peak season and is the main artery for Swiss exports to Italian ports. Lengthy standstills therefore disrupt just-in-time deliveries for manufacturers on both sides of the Alps and push additional traffic onto alternative passes that are already capacity-constrained. This year’s jam was aggravated by a simultaneous accident in the San-Bernardino tunnel, which forced heavy goods vehicles to park up at Campagnola and Hinterrhein, further squeezing the A2. With southern European holiday demand and large numbers of leisure travellers from Germany and the Benelux countries transiting Switzerland, traffic managers say congestion is likely to recur throughout late July and early August. Companies that rely on the corridor are being advised to build at least half-a-day’s buffer into logistics schedules, use real-time traffic apps from Viasuisse, and pre-book time-critical consignments on rail or combined transport services. Business travellers should consider flying to Milan or using Switzerland’s dense rail network to avoid unpredictable road delays. Long-term, Bern plans to alleviate the problem by opening the second Gotthard road tunnel (due 2029) and shifting more freight to the NRLA base-tunnel rail lines. Until then, seasonal queuing will remain a feature of cross-border mobility between central and southern Europe.
Source: SWI swissinfo.ch
