Initiated in the 1990s, the rail line project between Lyon and Turin has stalled on the French side, paralyzed by the divisions between opponents and supporters and the slowness of the executive, now responsible for deciding on the best route.
How to save time by connecting Lyon to Turin by train? The question has agitated the political class and the border populations since 1991. Put on the rails in 2002, the project of a 271 km long transalpine railway, of which nearly 60 dug under the Mont-Cenis massif, arouses great tensions between ” pro” and “anti”. A mobilization planned for Saturday June 17 in the Maurienne valley by opponents – a dozen organizations including Les Uprisings of the Earth and the Italian No-Tav – was banned by the prefecture, which fears “overflows”. Because if the project is old, the debate on its relevance has revived, while its commissioning schedule remains uncertain. We explain to you what is stuck.
The puzzle of the French route
This titanic project to run freight and passenger trains between France and Italy is made up of three parts: the longest section (140 km) in France, a section of about 45 km in Italy and a Franco-Italian segment of 84 km, most of which will be dug into the rock. However, the French route, between Lyon and the entrance to the tunnel, is still not known and the supporters of the project are urging the government to take a decision.
>> Lyon-Turin: five things to know about this rail project, considered the “construction site of the century” in Savoie
The Ministry of Transport had confirmed to AFP in mid-January its preference for the so-called scenario “large size”, the most expensive. He plans to reach the tunnel, not by taking the valleys, but by digging other tunnels, under the mountain ranges of Chartreuse and Belledonne. At the time, this option was “the subject of a first financial round with the co-financiers”, i.e. local authorities. This scenario was to be part of a “multi-annual investment programming” decided “once the report of the Infrastructure Orientation Council (COI) has been delivered”, said the ministry.
This report, delivered a few days later, disorients the French supporters of Lyon-Turin. The IOC, itself divided, then pleads for a postponement to 2045 of the opening of the new railway line. The plan: refocus priority on modernizing the existing line between Dijon and Modane (Savoie), “to enable it to accommodate freight traffic on the Lyon-Turin international route in good conditions when the base tunnel is put into service and to cope with the increase in daily rail transport”.
A very uncertain schedule
The COI report has revived the debate. Driven by the fear that the project will be postponed forever, 60 parliamentarians launched a transpartisan appeal to Emmanuel Macron in April, urging him to “launch the detailed preliminary design studies (APD) of the French section as soon as possible”. “Completion requires an urgent and resolute commitment from the State”, engaged the mayor of Saint-Priest, Gilles Gascon, signatory of a new appeal published on June 6, this time carried by the councilors of 42 (out of 59) municipalities of Greater Lyon.
On the side of the opponents, several associations, including Les Uprisings of the Earth and the Italian No-Tav, announced at the end of May their intention to demonstrate, Saturday June 17, in the Maurienne valley, to denounce the consequences of the construction site and “for the defense of mountains and water”.
Without an established route, the question of the calendar is not likely to be clarified. For supporters of the line, a final delivery in 2045, with its French portion, as envisaged in the COI report, does not make sense, while the tunnel dug under the Alps and the Italian part of the route must be delivered in 2032. “Opening a base tunnel with finished Italian accesses, but postponing those of France indefinitely, all while falsely claiming that the current accesses would be largely sufficient, seems incomprehensible to me and therefore unthinkable”, declared the president of the support association for Lyon-Turin La Transalpine, Jacques Gounon, city in March in The monitor.
Especially since the declaration of public utility attributed to this new portion will expire in 2028. Therefore, the project will no longer have a legal basis. “The declaration of public utility will not be extended” and this will make constructible entire sections of the route linking Lyon to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne (Savoie), the entrance to the tunnel, “subject to strong land pressure”argue the parliamentarians who co-signed the April appeal. “This would destroy the objectives of a massive transfer to rail of passenger and freight traffic in the Alps”they warn.
Environmental consequences that divide
In France, where transport is the sector that emits the most greenhouse gases, rail freight accounted for only 10.7% of freight transport in 2021, according to the Ministry for Ecological Transition. The Climate and Resilience Law plans to double the use of rail. While the European green plan and the climate emergency also call for promoting rail, the question of how to promote the development of freight is the subject of heated debate.
On this point, the opinion of the COI gave weight to the track of the modernization of the Dijon-Modane line, advocated by some of the opponents of Lyon-Turin. In a press release dated February 25, the NGO Les Amis de la Terre, the association Vivre ensemble en Maurienne or even La France insoumise believe that “the existing Ambérieu/Chambéry/Modane line is able to ensure a massive modal shift for 16 million tonnes per year, which is equivalent to the weight transported by one million heavy goods vehicles”. This is the objective displayed by the Franco-Italian company Telt, manager of the tunnel.
At the end of 2022, some 150 elected Greens and LFI signed a forum published by Reporterre advocating the rise of this line which they consider under-exploited. Conversely, the elected officials in favor of the new line consider that this Dijon-Modane will never be up to the ambitions of freight development. At the same time, mayors believe that the explosion of freight transport will poison the lives of residents. Quoted by the Savoyard media new life, the mayor of Brison-Saint-Innocent, Jean-Claude Croze, assures that local elected officials fear “for the nuisance that this line will cause, with constantly closed level crossings and a historic line on the lake which we do not know if it can absorb this kind of traffic, from a safety point of view”.
In view of the French procrastination, the COI noted in its January report that the environmental assessment of the project, established in 2011, “must also be taken up and updated on the basis of the chosen scenario”. How to assess the environmental impacts of the project without knowing the route?
A growing bill
Similarly, how to evaluate its cost without a precise vision of the schedule? The estimate of the overall cost of the project had already increased from 12 billion euros in 2002 to 26.1 billion euros in 2012, according to the Court of Auditors (PDF link). The cost of the tunnel alone has been reassessed from 5.2 to 9.6 billion euros, an increase of 85%, in a report by the European Court of Auditors (PDF link) published in 2020. For access roads, investments on the French side are estimated “at around 10 billion euros (2020 value excluding inflation)”, according to the entourage of the Minister of Transport. In July 2022, the president of the Agency for financing transport infrastructure in France (Afit France), Jean Castex, for his part, had advanced the figure of 15 billion euros.
While these questions remain unanswered, LFI deputies and environmentalists announced on Wednesday the launch of a “people’s commission of inquiry” in order, in particular, to interview the actors involved. Objective: the publication, within six to eight months, of an assessment of the potential of the already existing line and “the legality of the route” news, with its tunnels, as well as compliance with procedures and regulations by State services. By presenting this initiative, the patron saint of environmental deputies, Cyrielle Chatelain, castigated “a completely disproportionate project, in terms of financial amounts and environmental cost”.