THE world’s longest tunnel will be created today when a massive drilling machine breaks through the last few inches of rock under the Alps.

The 35.4-mile Gotthard Base rail tunnel is being hailed as an environmental triumph as much as an unprecedented engineering feat.

The £7bn hole through the Gotthard massif, including the 8,200-foot Piz Vatgira, along the route to Italy, is part of a larger project to shift goods from roads to rails, spurred mainly by a concern that heavy trucks were destroying Switzerland’s Alpine landscape.

Swiss voters, who are paying over £800 each to fund the project, approved its construction in a series of referendums almost 20 years ago and will have to wait several more before it is ready for rail traffic.

Conservationists say the money was worth spending even if it will only shave one hour off the time trains travel between northern Europe and Italy.

When it is opened for traffic in 2017, the Gotthard Base Tunnel will supplant Japan’s 33.5-mile Seikan Tunnel as the world’s longest.