he roads to the railsThe amount of road traffic increases year by year. In order to protect the population andenvironment, more road traffic should go by rail in the future. This is why the railwaysare being expanded. The ambitious NEAT project to construct two transalpine railways iscurrently under construction. It includes the Gotthard base tunnel, which at 50 km (31miles) will be the longest in the world, and the Ltschberg base tunnel which will be 29km (18 miles) long. The Ltschberg tunnel is scheduled to open in 2006-7, and theGotthard in 2012. In another move to encourage the switch to rail, in 2001 Switzerlandbecame the first country in Europe to introduce a tax for heavy vehicles calculatedaccording to their weight and distance travelled. 2001 saw another move to get freight offthe roads: the start of the so-called "rolling highway," moving trucks by rail acrossSwitzerland from the southern German city of Freiburg to Novara in northern Italy. TheLtschberg tunnel had to be specially adapted and the flatcars lowered to enable vehiclesup to four meters high and 44 tonnes to use the system, which is calculated down to thelast centimetre. It is hoped that in the medium term up to 350,000 trucks will use theservice annually.The railwayThe railway network is very dense and one of the busiest in the world. The Swiss areEurope's keenest rail users, clocking up 1,850 km (1,150 miles) per person in 1999.Despite the mountains and gorges, the railway is a model of precision and punctuality.The Swiss are expert railway builders. Trains cannot climb steep gradients, so they needa lot of track in order to gain height gradually. This is often hidden inside tunnels, whichare sometimes almost circular. The huge railway viaducts of the southeastern canton ofGrisons, built for the most part in the early 20th century, have become a tourist attractionin themselves, drawing rail enthusiasts from all over the world. Europe's highest station isat the Ju...
