9. Ticino: Logistics and Knowledge
Networks for the Future
Marco Netzer, Banque Cramer & Cie SA, Lugano
Marco Häfliger, BSI SA, Lugano
To the casual observer, most of Ticino’s landscapes are of capacity and functionality to truly unprecedented levels. At
such distinctive natural beauty as to relegate any associa- the regional level, funding for the planned rail link between
tion with the world of business into blissful irrelevance. Lush Lugano and Milan-Malpensa airport has been secured and
vegetation, mountains, valleys, streams, rivers and lakes, the route is scheduled to open in 2013, while the TILO joint
all bathed in bright sunshine - or covered in snow, creating venture created by the Swiss and Italian National Railways
glorious visual effects against the deep blue sky or a calm- a few years ago operates and develops cross-border traffic
ing golden sunset. Beginning with a flashback on the local (equivalent to 125 km of rail lines), offering improved coordi-
economy’s humble beginnings, when daily life implied much nation, higher frequencies and better overall service. TILO
hardship, uncertainty and often hardly any reward but bare services are used by some 20,000 commuters daily.
survival, this article aims to provide the reader with develop- The milestone ALPTRANSIT project (incorporating base tun-
ing visions, ideas and intuitive outlines for strategies in times nels through the Gotthard and the Monte Ceneri) will inte-
of change. What new opportunities, realities and constraints grate Switzerland into the pan-European high-speed network
will emerge from the continuous flow of new ideas, products, being rapidly completed, bringing about quantum leaps in
services, technologies, policies and market forces? both freight and passenger traffic through greatly increased
About 300 million years ago, the alpine region was a minus- transportation capacities and shorter journey times. The
cule part of an enormous land mass known as Pangaea, ramps of present-day railways through the Gotthard and Mt.
theorized to have existed during the Paleozoic and Meso- Ceneri have gradients of up to 26 per thousand. The flat-
zoic eras, and which began to disintegrate into various con- ness and straightness of the base route – maximum gradi-
tinental slabs, separated by the precursors of today’s seas ent 12.5 per thousand overground and 8.0 per thousand in
and oceans. Monte San Giorgio, a pyramid-shaped, wooded the base tunnels – will allow productive deployment of long,
mountain (1,096 m above sea level) to the south of Lake heavy trains through elimination of time-consuming shunting
Lugano is regarded as the best fossil record of marine life operations. Future qualified freight trains will travel at maxi-
from the Triassic Period (245–230 million years ago) and has mum speeds of up to 160 kph, haul maximum loads of 1,200
therefore been included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List. tons and have lengths of up to 450 meters. Unaccompanied
The sequence records life in a tropical lagoon environment, intermodal transport units will haul up to 4,000 tons of freight,
sheltered and partially separated from the open sea by an with train lengths of 750 – 1,500 meters. A necessary step to
offshore reef. The Alps were formed as a result of the African implement a continuous flat rail link through the Alps, the 15.4
and Eurasian tectonic plates colliding and exerting enormous km Ceneri Base Tunnel (scheduled to become operational in
pressure, forming great recumbent folds that rose out of what 2016) will bring about further improvements in the regional
had become the Tethys Sea. The two plates often broke and and cross-border transportation network. A further benefit of
slid one over the other to form gigantic thrust faults. the planned system is that subsequent underground exten-
In stark contrast, man appears to have influenced a predomi- sion of the tunnel to the South, or crossing of the Magadino
nant part of nature’s overwhelming forces in an incredibly plain to the North, can be undertaken without interruption of
short time span. The result of military conquest from the Mila- rail traffic in the Ceneri Base Tunnel.
nese by Switzerland’s northern cantons in the early 1500s,
MANCHESTER
Ticino owes much of its success to “soft” conquest of its own
territory through ingenuity, perseverance and openness,
HAMBURG
LONDON
ROTTERDAM
which took the form of granite extraction, advanced transport COLOGNE BERLIN
infrastructure at all times, high-quality architecture, building PORTO
LILLE
BRUSSELLS
HANNOVER
VARSAVIAMOSKOW
and construction, hydro-electric power generation, to name FRANKFURT
but the most obvious and historically relevant. BILBAO PARIS STRASBOURG MUNICH WIEN
BORDEAUX STUTTGART
Whereas Zurich international airport is just 25 minutes from LISBAO BUDAPEST,
CHISINAU
INSBRUCK
Lugano by plane (less than 3 hours by car or rail), the inter-
SEVILLA MADRID ZURICH
LUGANO
continental hub of Milan-Malpensa is only about 40 minutes MILANO TRIESTE
from Lugano by car. Lugano airport handles close to 300,000
LYION TORINO VENICE
LUBLIANA,
ZAGREB
passengers per year, catering mainly for higher-end market
NIMES
GENEVA BOLOGNA
VALENCIA BARCELONA
segments such as business travel and offering fast and re- FLORENCE
liable boarding, arrivals and baggage handling procedures. MARSEILLE
Both Milan-Malpensa and Zurich are among Europe’s busi-
ROME
NAPLES
est airports, recording high numbers in terms of passengers
and goods. Some 20.7 million commercial passengers were
registered at Zurich Airport in 2007, against Milan Malpensa’s Given the relative scarcity of land, the notion of its high rela-
24 million. The latter ranks as Italy’s most productive airport tive value is well entrenched in the population, creating an
for freight cargo (420,000 tons per year, compared to Zurich’s acute awareness of the limitations of development strategies
374 300 tons). that will ultimately be economically and ecologically unsus-
A net 39.5 million tons of goods were forwarded across the tainable. The preservation and cultivation of otherwise un-
Swiss alpine routes in 2007 (36% by road, 64% by rail – rep- productive areas is a welcome positive side-effect associated
resenting the highest percentage of transportation by rail in with a heavily subsidized farming sector. Some of the region’s
Europe), corresponding to a total of 1.2 billion truck passages. agricultural produce is hardly a side-effect, among which a
Significant investments will take the transport infrastructure’s superb red merlot wine, which is hard to find in the rest of
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9. Ticino: Logistics and Knowledge Networks for the Future
Switzerland or the United States. Urban planning is thus of Ticino are the Swiss Center for Scientific Calculation (an off-
paramount importance, which is perhaps best exemplified by shoot of the ETH Zurich Polytechnic), the Institute for Com-
the Ticinese’s innate passion for architecture. Ticino’s archi- puter Integrated Manufacturing, the Institute for Biomedical
tects have become world-famous over the centuries. Domen- Research, the Institute of Oncology and the Dalle Molle In-
ico Trezzini was a Swiss-Italian who built the Peterine Ba- stitute for Studies in Artificial Intelligence. Significantly, today
roque style of Russian architecture. Urban landscapes from these institutions are interlinked, and negotiations are under
St. Petersburg to Rome and Venice as well as, more recently, way aimed at eventually moving the entire Computational
San Francisco or Paris have been influenced by Southern Science research group from Zurich to an enlarged USI cam-
Swiss architectural flair. The “modern” generation (Mario Bot- pus in Lugano. SUPSI engineering faculty recently achieved
ta, Mario Campi, Aurelio Galfetti, Luigi Snozzi, Livio Vacchini a breakthrough in precise and non-invasive in-depth humid-
and others) created autonomous and individualistic styles ity measurement. Their microwave-based system provides
resulting from diverse and at times contradictory cultural in- fast, accurate data that is filed automatically; the system is in
fluences. Ties with Italy have been maintained, reinforced, use on Europe’s largest engineering site, the ALPTRANSIT
adapted and also combined with a central European artistic project, and as a core monitoring component in the drying
and intellectual heritage as typified by the Monte Verità ex- process applied to ceramic moulds.
perience. USI’s (Università della Svizzera Italiana, University The preconditions to continue developing Lugano and Ticino
of Lugano) faculty of Architecture is located in Mendrisio and as a strong hub in a fast-moving knowledge economy are
trains about 500 students on bachelor and master courses. thus in place, given also the presence of a well-developed
The following is taken from the notes of a territorial project and diversified financial industry. Its main institutions are re-
(i.CUP – IRE, “The New Lugano”, USI Academy of Architec- gional universal banks with a strong orientation towards mon-
ture, Mendrisio) and vividly illustrates the region’s integration ey management services, but also Swiss and international
into networks covering not just transportation and regional heavyweights and private banks in search of geographical
planning, but increasingly knowledge, too. “The design of Eu- diversification and profitable niche activities. Other services
rope’s high-speed train mobility shows the Ticino’s centrality (insurance, law firms, corporate consultancy services, com-
within a network that is redefining Europe’s landscape. This merce, logistics as well as tourism) are key components of
inevitably calls for reflections on the new proximities, the new local business activities. The availability of financial capital
strategic locations, and the interactions between local and alone, however, does not ensure the automatic viability of any
global mobility that will ensue. The new Lugano is a 10 km long strategy in a business, planning or public policy sense. Among
urban structure characterized by full transport intermodality, other productive supply-side factors, Ticino is the only Swiss
sustainable mobility and increased economic attractiveness, region located within less than 50 miles of a large metropoli-
combined with a renewed service-sector orientation, quali- tan area (Milan) with its considerable availability of qualified
tatively enhanced urban density, environmentally conscious human resources. Building on the experience gained with its
economic growth and a multicultural understanding.” Computer Science faculty (established in 2004), USI may
well broaden its scope to include more “pure” science facul-
ties in the future. Until such time, superior networking skills
among academics of all levels can, however, provide viable
solutions. Business promotion efforts are undertaken by gov-
ernment at the federal, cantonal and municipal level, amid an
approach to risk that is undergoing fundamental changes as
a result of financial turmoil and government policy responses
around the globe. In Ticino, the Start-Up Promotion Centre
helps graduates from local and other universities develop in-
novative business ideas into commercially viable enterprises.
Emanating from a federally funded innovation promotion
agency, the Centre is closely associated with the USI and
SUPSI universities and draws on the latter’s scientific, tech-
A functioning human knowledge network is arguably as im- nical and management resources to assess the feasibility of
portant as any network linked by roads, railways or fiber optic proposed ideas and projects, supporting their development,
cables, especially in terms of future economic performance. financing and implementation. The TECNOPOLO business
Many of these networks – official, privately-organized or in- accelerator supports young hi-tech companies, namely in
formal as they may be – can be traced to the high degree of the field of life sciences, which are still some time away from
geographical mobility the local population has been confront- reaching significant shareholder returns despite producing a
ed with over time. Emigration across the Alps and overseas certain revenue stream.
created Ticinese communities in the United States, Australia, So where is the vision for the future? Business in multicultural
Argentina, the United Kingdom, France etc., while nowadays Ticino has thrived on the mobility of its people and the real-
higher education and/or business career opportunities still ization that a strategic position along one of Europe’s main
act as powerful incentives for local talent to spend time away north-south transport routes alone cannot guarantee pros-
from home, often to return with new skills, languages and perity and success. As in the world of sports, openness to for-
cultural exposure. On the other hand, the Ticino offers the eign players and competition has been the best mechanism
full versatility and high standards of the Swiss public school- for creative development and success in many fields. As a
ing and higher education, Università della Svizzera Italiana geographically medium-sized area, the Ticino will in our view
(USI) and SUPSI (University of Applied Sciences) being the continue to excel in existing and new niche areas of manufac-
bellwether institutions. Together with private colleges and turing (electrical engineering, precision tools including medi-
schools, Franklin College and The American School in Swit- cal equipment etc.), design (components, consumer goods,
zerland among them, they bring together faculty and students fashion, apparel) and the services sector. The transition to
both local and international. USI’s student body by origin was a knowledge-based economy is well underway and should
composed as follows in 2008/9 (2,486 in total): Ticino 781 continue apace, with priorities assigned to potentially mar-
(31%), rest of Switzerland 241 (10%), Italy 897 (36%) and ketable knowledge and skills. Existing business development
other 567 (23%). The most important research centers in the programs may be geared to capture new markets and oppor-
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9. Ticino: Logistics and Knowledge Networks for the Future
tunities using even better and more systematic networking
techniques. An enlarged public-private development initiative
may well prove rewarding, hand in hand with the implementa-
tion of government incentives to attract internationally-active
companies through taxation levels seen as fair and equiva-
lent to the good level of public services, infrastructure and
physical security. The skills to bring about a fresh quantum
leap as the world economy recovers may not all be in place
yet, so today’s slower activities should provide opportunities
to plan ahead. The knowledge to expand productive capaci-
ties is certainly available, including potential new architectural
and engineering feats and more progressive zoning require-
ments. Now and in the future, Ticino and nature’s beauty and
power remain open for business, science, the arts and any
leisure activities our guests may choose.
About the authors:
Marco Netzer is Chairman at Banque Cramer & Cie SA. He is also
member with the Ticino Chapter Board of the Swiss-American
Chamber of Commerce (SACC).
Marco Häfliger is Vice President at BSI SA in Lugano. He is also
member with the Ticino Chapter Board of the Swiss-American
Chamber of Commerce (SACC).