Ticino - Transport

Transport

There are several tunnels underneath the Gotthard Pass connecting the canton to northern Switzerland: the first to be opened was the 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) long Gotthard Rail Tunnel in 1882, replacing the pass road, connecting Airolo with Göschenen in the Canton of Uri. A 17 km (11 mi) motorway tunnel, the Gotthard Road Tunnel, opened in 1980. A second rail tunnel through the pass, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, is currently under construction. When completed, it will be the longest tunnel in the world, reducing travel time between Zürich and Lugano to 1 hour 40 minutes.

Treni Regionali Ticino Lombardia (TiLo), a joint venture between the Italian Ferrovie dello Stato and the Swiss Federal Railways launched in 2004, manages the traffic between the regional railways of Lombardy and the Ticino rapid transit network via a S-Bahn system.

The Regional Bus and Rail Company of Canton Ticino provides the urban and suburban bus network of Locarno, operates the cable cars between Verdasio and Rasa, and between Intragna – Pila – Costa on behalf of the owning companies, and, together with an Italian company, the Centovalli and Vigezzina Railway which connects the Gotthard trans-Alpine rail route at Locarno with the Simplon trans-Alpine route.

Lugano Airport is the busiest airport in southern Switzerland, serving some 200,000 passengers a year.