A2 (Switzerland)

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A 2

Location of the A2 within Switzerland
Route information
Part of E 35
Major junctions
North end A 5 at German border
Major intersections
South end A 9 at Italian border
Location
CountrySwitzerland
Highway system
The A2 motorway in Ticino, suspended over viaducts

The A2 (the Gotthard Motorway) is a motorway in Switzerland. It forms Switzerland's main north–south axis from Basel to Chiasso, meandering with a slight drift toward the east. It lies on the Gotthard axis and crosses the Alps. Opened in 1955 under the name "Road Lucerne-south",[1] A2 is one of the busiest motorways in Switzerland.

The A2 motorway leaves Basel heading south toward Olten, Sursee, Luzern, Stans, Altdorf, Erstfeld, Göschenen, Airolo, Biasca, Bellinzona, Lugano and reaches Chiasso. It intersects with the A1, A8, A13 and A14 motorways.

The St. Gotthard Tunnel lies at the heart of the motorway and makes up its culminating point. With a maximum elevation of 1,175 meters (3,855 ft)[2] at the tunnel's highest point, the A2 motorway has the lowest maximum elevation of any direct north–south road through the Alps. Traffic jams stretching for kilometres on end are frequently found on both entrances of the tunnel, but more frequently on the northern flank. The difficulty with driving through the St. Gotthard tunnel is that it is a motorway tunnel with one lane per direction, but without a central reservation. So far, The Swiss government has decided to upgrade the second tunnel into a full road tunnel in order to allow for the necessary reconstruction of the first road tunnel. Once the works on the first tunnel are finished, the Swiss government plans to operate one single lane in each tunnel (northbound traffic in the newly constructed tunnel, southbound traffic in the renovated one) in order to maintain the current tunnel overall capacity, in compliance with the Swiss constitutional norm that forbids a further growth of the traffic capacity across the Alps.[3] The reconstruction would have lasted for several years in any variant – one variant would push the traffic over the mountain pass, another proposed to load the vehicles onto trains with a new terminal, a third would close the tunnel for several months every year over time range of a decade. All of these have their drawbacks and the usage of the second tunnel was chosen as the best option to allow for the reconstruction. Further usage of both tunnels was subject to a popular referendum that was held in February 2016, where it was approved. The actual upgrade mining of the second road tunnel would last from 2020 to 2027 at a cost of 2.7 billion francs for the whole project including the following reconstruction of the first tunnel.[4]

Near Lucerne, this motorway passes through the Sonnenberg Tunnel, which until recently was the world's largest nuclear blast shelter.

List of Exits

Listed are exits heading south as of Basel
Symbols: ↗ = exit (↘ = exit only; → = only when heading for Chiasso; ← = only when heading for Basel); ⇆ = main interchange; S = service area

Canton of Basel-Stadt

Border with Germany (German A 5)

Canton of Basel Landschaft

Canton of Solothurn

Canton of Aargau

Canton of Lucerne

Canton of Nidwalden

Canton of Uri

Canton of Ticino

Service area Stalvedro in Ticino.
Border with ItalyItalian A9
Wikimedia Commons has media related to A2 (Switzerland).

References

  1. ^ "Vor 60 Jahren wurde in Luzern die erste Schweizer Autobahn eröffnet". Radio Pilatus (in German). CH Media. June 10, 2015. Retrieved July 11, 2021.
  2. ^ Der Tiefbau, Volume 14 (1974)
  3. ^ "Gotthard II: an extra tunnel but no new traffic". DriveEuropeNews.com. 16 September 2013. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
  4. ^ "Bundesrat will zweite Röhre für Gotthard-Strassentunnel". SF Schweizer Fernsehen. 27 June 2012. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
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