IN Brief:
- Webuild has started TBM excavation of the Gardena Tunnel on the Fortezza-Ponte Gardena lot.
- The works form part of the southern access to the Brenner Base Tunnel on the Munich-Verona rail axis.
- The package includes more than 16km of tunnelling and around 9,000 precast concrete segments.
Webuild has started tunnel boring machine excavation of the Gardena Tunnel on the Fortezza-Ponte Gardena lot, advancing a key section of the Brenner south access route in northern Italy.
The TBM, named Kathrin, has begun excavation after completing the 650m Funes access adit, which opened access into the mountain massif. From that point, the 144m-long machine, with a cutterhead nearly 10m in diameter, will bore the twin tubes forming the Gardena Tunnel and the interconnection tunnels linked to the future Ponte Gardena station.
The package is being delivered in the Trentino-Alto Adige region for RFI, part of the FS Italiane Group. The Fortezza-Ponte Gardena lot is being built by a consortium led by Webuild, with Implenia and SELI Overseas, Webuild’s specialist tunnelling subsidiary, as partners.
Planned works include more than 16km of tunnels and the installation of around 9,000 precast concrete segments. The broader Fortezza-Ponte Gardena railway project covers a 22.5km high-capacity section extending from the southern end of the Brenner Base Tunnel to Ponte Gardena on the Italian side of the Alps.
Most of the scheme is underground. Once complete, it will form the first section of the southern access quadrupling of the Munich-Verona railway route, reducing gradients, improving speed and freight capacity, and strengthening the Alpine rail link between Italy and Central Europe.
Kathrin is a dual-mode TBM, allowing it to alternate between hard rock and more unstable ground conditions. The machine has already been tested beneath the Brenner highway, where excavation was carried out without interrupting surface traffic. Its high-efficiency motors and cooling water recovery systems are designed to reduce energy consumption per cubic metre excavated by 20% to 25% compared with traditional models.
Other elements of the lot are progressing in parallel. At the Forch cavern, preparation work is under way for the 15km Scaleres Tunnel. At the Chiusa access adit, 1,400m of the planned 1,800m have been completed. The wider package also includes tunnel works, a 250m viaduct over the Isarco River, and upgrades at Ponte Gardena station.
The Fortezza-Ponte Gardena works sit within the wider Brenner Base Tunnel system, which is planned to become the world’s longest underground railway tunnel at 64km. Webuild is involved in around 50km of line across four lots on both sides of the Italy-Austria border, including works on the Mules 2-3 lot, the Sill Gorge-Pfons lot in Austria, and completed sections at Tulfes-Pfons and the Isarco underpass.
European rail investment is increasingly being shaped by corridor-scale programmes that combine tunnelling, stations, viaducts, electrification, signalling, and logistics. The aim is to remove capacity constraints and shift more long-distance freight and passenger movement from road to rail. Similar pressures are driving upgrades elsewhere in Europe, including the Croatian rail modernisation package awarded to Afcons Infrastructure.
Long Alpine tunnels place exceptional demands on delivery teams. Geology, TBM performance, segment manufacture, spoil handling, ventilation, water management, tunnel safety, and cross-passage sequencing all affect output. A machine launch is a major milestone, but productivity has to be maintained over long distances and through changing ground conditions.
The Gardena Tunnel start moves the Brenner south access into a more intensive construction phase. As excavation advances, the project will need to hold tunnelling productivity, environmental controls, railway integration, and station-interface works together across one of Europe’s most important cross-border rail corridors.
