Mont Blanc Tunnel: The Engineering Marvel You've Never Heard Of

For centuries, mountain ranges have served as one of the most formidable obstacles for mankind. They are a transportation nightmare for anyone in the business of moving goods or people: you either had to wind your way through them, which was a slow, time consuming, and dangerous process, or else go around them, which could take you hundreds or even thousands of miles out of your way.

Modern technology has solved the problem of mountain ranges, however, in the form of road tunnels: rather than go over or around the mountain, you simply blow a hole right through it and build your road there. Road tunnels are a vital piece of transportation infrastructure, saving travelers countless hours and allowing for the passage of heavy commercial traffic which would otherwise have been unable to traverse the mountains. However, we as commuters tend to overlook tunnels, with few people truly appreciating the immense amount of effort and resources needed to carve out these shortcuts through the mountains, such as the Mont Blanc Tunnel.

When it opened to traffic in 1965, the Mont Blanc was both the longest and the deepest road tunnel ever built. Stretching over 11.5 kilometers under Europe’s highest mountain, the tunnel has served as a vital link between France and Italy, at one point carrying as much as one third of Italy’s commercial traffic to the rest of the continent. Unfortunately, it also showcased how dangerous tunnels like this can be, when a disaster in 1999 claimed more than three dozen lives.

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[julioperez]

Great video, Karl. Enjoyed the tangents and those little factoids that you are well aware of. Get well soon!!

[danielsantiagourtado]

Thanks For this karl! Love your content 🔥🔥🔥

[aRealAndHumanManThing]

Nice, new video!
And as much as I like Simon, it's really refreshing to have some channels with more hosts, while grtting the same quality thanks to your guys great writing team

[Iamtheliquor]

Been through the Blanc many times as a former Continental Truck driver. It’s a long one but the scenery in the Aosta valley is worth it

[luuorallemn]

I hope you feel better, soon, Karl 🫶 I also hope you become one of the permanent hosts of this channel. I love your episodes.

[Resileaf]

6:53 Pfft, I don't have to wait for the Mad Max-like post-apocalyptic world to start worshipping the mechanical tunneling worm, thank you very much.

Great work as ever, Karl. Glad you got to treat a (mostly) positive subject.

[atarichild]

Not to be confused with the Mel Blanc Tunnel, which is just painted onto the side of a cliff.

[aplaceinthewind]

Clearly entertaining! Hope you get well soon, from across the pond. Austin, TX

[Tony-dprl]

I loved Mont Blanc as Joey in the Friends TV show

[bullie]

That Keeps stuff really helped Simon, huh?

[johnmac]

' if Hannibal had the option he'd have taken his elephants through the tunnel instead of over the Alps ' .... yeah Karl that would be some sight .. lol

[JonneBackhaus]

Karl goes full on brainblaze in the intro

[russelllomando]

Daylight - great movie. good reporting, thanks ks.
margarine is 1 molecule away from plastic - even bugs won't eat it.

[trumpetmom]

I don’t completely understand why the truck driver was fined if the cause of the fire was someone else throwing a cigarette butt out the window. Was it because he stopped in the tunnel? How would he have known that stopping to get his extinguisher would make things worse?

[RogerHammond]

Drove through this last month in an Audi q8 which threw the brakes on hard as we crossed the Italian border in the middle of the tunnel along with the message that predictive cruise control is not available in Italy. I can probably understand why... You can't predict Italian driving! Still... Thankful for the 150m gap enforcement

[aporkpiepizza]

Shout out to Chuggy. Buried, but never forgotten 😅

[hoppytoad]

I'm one of the few that didn't know about this tunnel, so I enjoyed learning about its history. I'm not surprised the fire in '99 reached the level it did in a tunnel that long, but that there were supposed to be safety measures in place to prevent a disaster like that from happening and they weren't working like they were supposed to enrages me. The loss of life breaks my heart. I don't see how the truck driver was at fault for what happened, but, as another commenter said, the officials probably wanted/needed a scapegoat to focus the public outrage on.

[John-gxh]

Things had to go wrong perfectly, to make things go so perfectly wrong.

[jaybeee]

Im confident a large number of people will have heard of this tunnel.