Betuwe Line Starts Operating between the Netherlands and GermanyQueen Beatrix of the Netherlands opened the Betuwe line on 16th June, 2007 at Barendrecht station where, besides the Betuwe line, four regular passenger lines and the new high speed line converge.The dedicated rail freight line connects Maasvlakte in the outer Port of Rotterdam with the Dutch-German border near Emmerich, and hereby with the European hinterland. Through this new railroad, an average of 160 trains per day is expected to cross the Dutch-German border, carrying around 37 million tonnes of freight a year. The new line has a capacity of 10 freight trains per hour and per direction. The first commercial train left on 18th June from the shunting area 'Kijfhoek' just outside the Rotterdam port area.The new rail section allows a maximum speed of 120 km/h and it is designed to satisfy all possible future innovations (by using, for example, the latest generation of the harmonised European train control system, and by designing the infrastructure for double stack containers).The line will have a positive impact on the competitiveness of the Rotterdam-Genoa freight corridor, increasing reliability and capacity by 52%, as well as reducing journey time. These achievements will allow rail cargo to become more competitive, to increase its market share and to double the freight volume on the Rotterdam-Genoa corridor over the same period.Construction started in 1998. The line runs through five tunnels totalling nearly 18 kilometres. The tunnels are the Botlek tunnel (3.1 km), the Sophia tunnel at Papendrecht (8.1 km), the De Giesen tunnel (1.4 km), the Pannerdensch Canal tunnel (2.6 km) and the Zevenaar tunnel (2.3 km) near the German border. Three of them (Botlek, Sophia and Pannerdensch Canal) were bored by TBMs. Click nl/11. The Botlek tunnel solves a critical bottleneck in the highly industrialised Rotterdam port area. The tunnel is equipped with ultra-modern technical systems, such as sprinklers, ventilators, fire and train detection, telecommunication, emergency power supply and liquid discharge provisions. The Botlek rail tunnel has a total length of 2 x 3,065 metres and the distance between the tunnel tubes is about ten metres.The EU contributed EUR135 million to the financing of this EUR4.6 billion rail line. The line is one of the priority projects of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and is a key link on the European corridor 24 Rotterdam-Genoa that crosses Switzerland. As a next step, the concept will be extended to the whole corridor, supporting both infrastructure improvements and the implementation of European rail traffic management. Visit www.betuweroute.nl 26/07.