The multi-billion-euro Brenner Base Tunnel project is one of Europe’s biggest construction sites.
Deep down, in the heart of a Tyrolean mountain valley, gigantic tunnel-boring machines are gnawing their way through the Austrian Alps.
This is where the longest railway tunnel in the world is being built – and all that blasted rock has to go somewhere.
Engineers, geologists and landscape planners wrestled with this environmental quandary when designing the “new” Padaster Valley.
Work began around 10 years ago. Today the valley is a stony wasteland. Yet in 10 years’ time a blossoming Alpine landscape is supposed to stretch out here once again.
