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A large demonstration is planned this weekend in Savoie, against the new Lyon-Turin railway line. Violence is feared, which is why this gathering was banned by the prefecture. It is a battle that has been going on for more than 30 years.
Despite the prefectural ban on demonstrations, opponents of the construction site of the Lyon-Turin line are beginning to gather. “JI am convinced that we can still stop Lyon-Turin“, says a demonstrator. Thursday, June 15, it was supporters of the project, including many local elected officials, who gave voice. “We need to have less polluted air, and for that, we have to put the means“, declares Gérald Bourdon, deputy mayor of Val-Cenis-Termignon (Savoie).
30 years of dialogue of the deaf. However, at first the project seemed to be off to a good start. Moreover Jacques Chirac, president on the right, and his Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, on the left, displayed the same smile. Everyone seemed to agree on the observation.
Less than 10% of the 57 km of tunnel have been dug
At the time, as today, the main argument was to remove 700,000 trucks a year from the roads of the Alps, and the pollution that goes with it. Second advantage of the train: of course, the speed, which excited the journalists of the time, we are in 2005.
But on the Italian side, opponents of the project, considered pharaonic and dangerous for the environment, are blocking the site. They are dislodged, there are several wounded. In the streets of Turin (Italy), supporters of the tunnel also demonstrate massively. On the French side, the opponents, in turn, are delaying the work and denouncing the financial slippage of the project. Today, less than 10% of the 57 km of tunnel have been dug. If completed, the project imagined in the 1980s will not be ready before 2032, at a cost reassessed at 26 billion euros.