The trio sat together in a first-class carriage, along with
Schneider-Amman, and chatted over glasses of water through the 20-minute
journey from Erstfeld in the central canton of Uri southward to Ticino
canton. Speaking at ceremony in the town Pollegio after the inaugural
trip, Hollande urged British voters to recall their closeness to Europe
on the June 23 Brexit vote. “We are as united as we have ever been,”
Hollande said, drawing a parallel between the GBT and the 1994 opening
of the Channel Tunnel, which connected Paris and London by high-speed
rail and fostered fresh ties between the two capitals. The trailblazing rail passage under the Swiss Alps aiming to ease transit through the heart of Europe. With Europe’s political unity shaken by a massive migrant crisis and the looming threat of Britain’s EU exit, Swiss president Johan Schneider-Amman said the tunnel would “join the people and the economies” of Europe. He spoke as the first train made a ceremonial run through the 57km Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) beneath the region’s spectacular mountain peaks, with European leaders on board. The tunnel took 17 years to build, at a cost of over 12 billion Swiss francs (US$12 billion), with 125 labourers rotating in three shifts to lay the tunnel’s slab track in 43,800 hours of non-stop work, according to the Swiss rail service. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi were among the passengers on the first train on Wednesday.
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