RAILWAY CONNECTION LYON TURIN

The Lyon-Turin Rail Link was the most important part of the former Priority Project 6. The tunnel should act as a key node between northern and southern Europe (London/Amsterdam/Paris-Milano) and west and east (Lisbon-Budapest). The main line side structures are the 11.4 km Orsiera Tunnel on the Italian side and the 57.1km “Base Tunnel” between the Susa Valley in Italy and Maurienne in France.  This is also the most problematic project on this track.
There is a large amount of resistance from the local population against the planned project. Due to a predicted shortfall in the traffic of this region, the economic grounds for this project are somewhat questionable. The existing roads and railways are not used to their capacity and could easily handle the forecasted volume of traffic. Rail freight transport in Italy travels at an average of 19 km per hour, because freight trains stop at several stations to make space for passenger trains. Therefore it doesn’t seem very practical to have the freight transport coming from Lyon at 150 km/h and then slowing down in Italy because of having to stop at stations. This bottleneck must be improved before this project is planned.
Economic concerns are another problem. As traffic declines in the future, the cost of transport will increase. The Milano-Salerno high-speed train line is the best negative example of this. Even the high ticket prices of this line are not enough to pay back the long-term investment and the daily operational costs. Investment costs are mainly paid by the Member States, and only partly by the EU. The high costs would lead Italy to contract new debts; and it already has one of the highest debt to GDP ratios in Europe.
As well as the economic reasons, there are also some environmental problems. The mountain contains a large amount of radioactive material internally. The material resulting from the excavations will be disposed of in two open pits; and this would pollute the environment. Meteorological agents, re-suspension and wind would also cause the radioactive material to become a potential threat to the local population. This radioactive material would in particular be harmful to people’s lungs, and would increase the lung-cancer rate. Also the workers in the tunnel are under a very high risk of getting harmed, if the total air content of the tunnel isn´t renewed every hour.

Another potential threat would be the asbestos excavation materials. Even a few fibres can cause serious harm. While the proposers of the project claim that there is only 170,000 m3 of asbestos, its critics say that false measurements of the danger of this material have been used.
The whole project could also be a potential threat to the water reservoirs of the municipalities concerned. The excavation activities will risk draining or diverting the springs, which would leave the population without water; or these activities could pollute the springs and thus make them unusable.
As an alternative, we need a comprehensive transport policy that promotes multi-modal transport, introduces fees for heavy road transport and upgrades existing railway connections between France and Italy.