Passage: Moving through Mountains
Moving through Mountains
An age-old proverb says that necessity is the mother of invention. (2) Centuries of human ingenuity in the face of obstacles prove this to be true. (3) For many years the Swiss Alps, a mountain range spanning southern Switzerland and northern Italy, were such an obstacle. (4) Roads and railways had to navigate around the mountains or through winding tunnels inside the mountains, making the transportation of people and goods difficult and time consuming. (5) In 2016 these burdens were eased with the completion of the Gotthard Base Tunnel. Construction of the high-speed railway tunnel began in 1996.
(7) The tunnel was created through the use of tunnel-boring machines, which are giant drills with a flat rotating head called a cutter head. (8) Each of the tunnel-boring machines used during the construction of the tunnel was about the length of four football fields arranged end-to-end. (9) During the seventeen-year construction period, 28 million tons of rock were removed, enough to rebuild the Great Pyramid of Giza five times. (10) This massive construction project is reported to have cost $12 billion. (11) After that, 4 million cubic meters of concrete, or enough concrete to build eighty-four Empire State Buildings, were used to construct and support the tunnel.
By 2020 the high-speed railway will carry more than 250 freight trains and 55 passenger trains a day, with most traveling at speeds of around 100 to 125 miles per hour. (13) It will be faster for people to travel between northern and southern Europe. (14) The travel time between the European cities of Zurich, Switzerland, and Milan, Italy, will be reduced by an hour. (15) Many European leaders compare the Gotthard Base Tunnel to the Channel Tunnel, a 33-mile underwater tunnel that connects the United Kingdom and France. (16) While there is no roadway in the Channel Tunnel, people can drive their cars onto special trains that will carry vehicles through to the other side.
Just as traffic congestion in major cities led to the construction of underground local transportation, natural formations, such as mountain ranges, have also sent people underground for faster, easier, and cheaper methods of transportation across larger areas. (18) There is renewed interest in constructing innovative methods of transportation that will help eliminate problems associated with traveling to and from certain areas.
Which sentence presents information that shifts away from the main topic of the third paragraph (sentences 12–16) and should be removed?
- Asentence 13
- Bsentence 14
- Csentence 15
- Dsentence 16
Show the answer
Correct answer: D
The answer is (D)
The question asks which sentence should be removed because it presents an idea that shifts away from the main idea of the third paragraph, which is about the transportation benefits of the Gotthard Base Tunnel.
Option D (sentence 16) is the correct response because, even though the sentence provides additional information about the Channel Tunnel, it does not help the reader understand the benefits of the Gotthard Base Tunnel, so it should be removed.
Option A (sentence 13) is incorrect because the idea of faster travel times is important to the development of the main idea of the paragraph.
Option B (sentence 14) is incorrect because the sentence provides a specific example of decreased travel time between two cities when traveling through the Gotthard Base Tunnel, supporting the development of ideas in the paragraph.
Option C (sentence 15) is incorrect because the sentence compares the Gotthard Base Tunnel to another tunnel that provides an important connection between places, and the sentence supports the idea that transportation innovations are beneficial.