Monte Ceneri Rail Tunnel in the context of "Monte Ceneri"

The Monte Ceneri Road Tunnel is a motorway tunnel in the Swiss canton of Ticino. The tunnel is situated under the Monte Ceneri Pass that separates the north of the canton around Bellinzona from the south of the canton around Lugano. It forms part of the A2 motorway that links the north of Switzerland with Italy. It was completed in 1984, and is 1,412 metres (4,633 ft) in length.

The road tunnel is paralleled by the 1,692 metres (5,551 ft) long Monte Ceneri Rail Tunnel, carrying the Swiss Federal Railways Gotthard line under the same pass.

The Ceneri Base Tunnel (CBT; Italian: Galleria di base del Monte Ceneri) is a Swiss railway base tunnel in the canton of Ticino. It passes under Monte Ceneri between Camorino in the Magadino Flat and Vezia near Lugano; it bypasses the former high-altitude rail route through the Monte Ceneri Tunnel. It is composed of two single-track tunnels, each 15.4 km (9.6 mi) long. It is part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project for faster north-south rail links across the Swiss Alps.

An exploration tunnel near Sigirino was excavated between 1999 and 2003 to gain geological data on the rock formations at the Ceneri Base Tunnel's level. Based on those data, it was decided to excavate most of the tunnel with traditional blasting methods and only drill a small part using a faster tunnel boring machine (TBM). Both the CBT and Gotthard Base Tunnels were built under contract from the Swiss Federal Government by Alptransit Gotthard AG. Construction of the two single-track bores started during March 2006. The official start of the CBT's construction phase was celebrated on 2 June 2006 with the laying of a foundation stone. The final breakthroughs took place on 21 January 2016 (west tube) and 26 January 2016 (east tube). Rail service started on 4 September 2020 and was operationalised for freight in December 2020.