TAV Turin-Lyon:between delays and proclamations, where are we really at?

The actual work on the TAV never began.And it would be enough to modernize the existing line.Interview with engineer Alberto Poggio.

The construction of the AD railway line has been discussed for over thirty years high speed between Turin and Lyon, the Tab.The first discussions date back, in fact, to the 1990s, when the Italian and French governments agreed for the first time to study a new connection between the two countries across the western Alpine arc.A project that received recognition at European level in 1994, having been included by the European Union in the list of corridors (14 then reduced to 9) of the trans-European transport network (Ten-T): Turin-Lyon It thus becomes part of the “Mediterranean Corridor” Algeciras – Lviv (formerly Corridor 5 Lisbon – Kiev).The formal collaboration between Italy and France began in 1996, the signature of the first agreement dates back to 2001.

But since then, the actual work on the line was never started.Corruption cases, project delays, political changes, protests by the civilian population:the past three decades have been punctuated by various obstacles to the realization of the work. Arriving in 2024, the question is still the same:where are we at? LifeGate asked Alberto Poggio, engineer, member of the Turin-Lyon technical commission of the Unione Montana Valle Susa.

Engineer Poggio, where are we at with the Turin-Lyon high-speed line?
We are talking about a total extension of 270 kilometers of the work, of which 70 percent in France and 30 percent in Italy.The cross-border base tunnel accounts for only 57.5 kilometres.Its construction is entrusted to a public Italian-French company called Telt.Then we have the two national sections:the Italian one that goes from Turin to Bussoleno - under the responsibility of Ferrovie dello Stato - and the French one - under the responsibility of Sncf -, from Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Lyon.Despite belonging to the same infrastructure, the three projects develop separately and are not coordinated with each other.

So let's start with the cross-border section.Recently, in December 2023, the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Matteo Salvini was in Chiomonte, Turin, where he announced the start of work on the Turin-Lyon base tunnel.Is it really like that?
In December, Minister Salvini only inaugurated the construction of a motorway junction.Despite the announcements, the excavation of the base tunnel here never started.The construction site in La Maddalena di Chiomonte has been open since 2011.The tunnel had to wait for the works of an exploratory tunnel to study the characteristics of the mountain rocks.

Meanwhile, the project has accumulated delays due to the numerous variations desired by the proponents of the work.One of these chose to move the main excavation site for the Italian part of the tunnel (12.5 km) to the small site of Chiomonte.Not having been designed for this purpose, the current narrow spaces are inadequate to manage the enormous volumes expected for excavation debris, which therefore must be taken elsewhere.Hundreds of thousands of truck trips are needed, impossible to pass on the single narrow mountain road that leads to La Maddalena.

A big problem, solvable only at the cost of carrying out further ancillary work:a temporary junction on the A32 Frejus motorway, whose viaduct passes 30 meters above the construction site.To reach it you need a kind of reinforced concrete "roller coaster", with two steep ramps.This additional construction takes over 2 and a half years, with heavy traffic restrictions on the A32 motorway leading to the tourist resorts of the Upper Susa Valley.The tunnel will have to wait a little longer.

How are the 45 kilometers of base tunnels in French territory progressing?
In 2001, work began on ancillary works in France:three transversal tunnels for access of systems and service vehicles to the base tunnel, in Modane, La Praz and Saint-Martin-La-Porte.And then, again in Saint-Martin-La-Porte, another exploratory tunnel of about 10 km on the proposed route for the base tunnel.Having been paid for in part by the European Union as a geognostic test, the tunnel cannot be declared as a tunnel excavation.Finally, at the Avrieux site, a very long drilling activity for some ventilation chimneys is still underway.

The base tunnel is double-tube, so 115 km of tunnels need to be dug.The excavation is mainly done with an automatic cutter, called a "mole".Those planned would be 7 but to date there is not even a shadow of them.

To demonstrate that work is not at a standstill, a construction site was opened in Saint-Julien-Montdenis in December 2022, where the entrance to the base tunnel is planned.After a year and a half of work with traditional means, just 1 km was excavated.A purely propaganda operation to mask the reality of the facts:in France as in Italy the work is on the high seas.

Furthermore, a few days ago, a new fatal accident sadly occurred on the Saint-Julien-Montdenis construction site.For Torino Lyon it is the third victim at work in a year.

So far the base tunnel.What can we say, however, regarding the two national routes, Italy and France?
In the mid-2000s the Italian access route to the base tunnel was imagined from Bussoleno to Settimo Torinese.After many route changes, in 2011 the State Railways proposed a preliminary project, which was then set aside by the government due to its exorbitant cost.In 2021 the hypothesis was resurrected in a shortened version:the government decided to use the existing lines, deemed adequate.The only exception is between Avigliana and Turin, where the construction of a new line with a tunnel that crosses the Morainic Hill of Rivoli continues to be proposed.Despite the appointment of a new extraordinary commissioner (the third in twenty years), the planning situation remains nebulous.Yet another core sampling campaign was recently carried out in the Rivalta area.Evidently we are still studying the soils.

On the French side, the discussion dragged on for twenty years.In 2019 the French government made a final decision:will upgrade the existing lines from Modane to Dijon to use them as an access route to the base tunnel.The possible construction of new lines will be evaluated only after 2043, if a real evolution in transport demand is recorded.

Putting the pieces of the puzzle back together, the picture is paradoxical.The final works on the base tunnel have not actually started yet.The forecasts for its completion are constantly slipping, they are now bypassing the middle of the next decade.Assuming it is actually built, the base tunnel will find itself in the middle of existing lines, not new ones as one would like to believe:certainly in France, as decided by the government, and to a large extent also in Italy, where the planning of new routes is in the fog.Result?With or without a base tunnel, the transport capacity of the Turin – Lyon railway axis will remain the same as it currently is.Furthermore, a capacity that the French government deems adequate for the maximum flow of goods observed in the last forty years.

Let's get to the economic question.Who should pay for the works?
Public money.National routes in Italy and France weigh almost entirely on their respective state budgets.For the base tunnel, the division established in the international agreements sees Italy shouldering 58 percent of the cost compared to 42 percent for France.A decidedly asymmetrical distribution, considering that the infrastructure is developed for just one fifth in Italian territory and 4/5 in French territory.

Both countries hope to cover more than 50 percent of the costs of the base tunnel with European contributions.Over the last twenty years, funding has been requested several times from the European Union, which has so far provided contributions for the projects and preparatory works.Last January 30, yet another application was submitted in the last available call for tenders of the Connecting Europe Facility (Cef) program dedicated to Ten-T projects.The results will only be known in the coming months.However, the economic endowment of the tender is already known, amounting to 2.7 billion euros, which the Turin - Lyon will necessarily have to share with a myriad of other railway, road, air, port and river infrastructures nominated by the member states along the 9 European corridors .The next funding opportunity will not arrive before 2028, after the approval of the European budget for the next seven years.

In short, little money.The financial capacity of European contributions is completely insufficient to keep the promises made on the completion of the base tunnel works.The 5 moles recently purchased by Telt are still sitting in the assembly plants in Germany.Without money to turn them around, they will remain parked there for a long time.

But how much money are we talking about, in total, to see the finished work?
The Turin-Lyon is the most expensive infrastructure project in Europe:9.6 billion euros for the final works on the base tunnel.This is an assessment based on the costs of the pre-pandemic period and before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, therefore to be revised upwards in light of the recent increases in material prices.In a previous historical context, the construction of the Gotthard railway tunnel saw an increase of over 15 percent in the total construction cost, in Switzerland, where attention is notoriously very high.However, in the Turin-Lyon shopping list we must also include the amount paid from 2001 to today for studies, geognostic surveys, preparatory works, project variations, communication campaigns, publications, conferences, consultancy, new offices, etc.Over 2 billion euros already spent without having yet laid a meter of new railway.If we sum it up we arrive at 12-13 billion euros.And so far we have only talked about the cross-border tunnel.

For the two national routes, in the absence of projects, there are no reliable estimates of the construction costs of the hypothesized new lines.In Italy, in 2011 the old project (then set aside) was estimated at 4.6 billion euros, of which 1.7 for the Avigliana – Turin route alone and around 0.2 for the modernization of the Bussoleno – Avigliana line.In France, early estimates for new lines between Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and Lyon exceeded 11 billion.In a subsequent estimate, in a reduced version to try to contain costs, the approximately 60 km of tunnels were planned to be entirely single track.Yet the calculation still reached 7 billion euros.An expense that the French government cannot afford.It is no coincidence that it has already decided to modernize the existing lines, which costs 0.7 billion euros (one tenth!).

I remember an estimate from the French Court of Auditors which spoke of a total cost of the work of around 27 billion.Is that figure still current?
In 2012 the French Court of Auditors raised the alarm about the Turin – Lyon whose costs were exploding up to 26.1 billion euros.Since then the watchword has been "low cost".More than ten years later, we can try to repeat the same calculation.Counting the not updated estimates for the base tunnel and for the new lines on the Italian and French national routes, in their reduced versions, we already exceed 20 billion euros.If we consider the strong increases in materials prices recorded in recent years, we do not differ much from the estimate of the French Court of Auditors.The “low cost” project costs the same as the previous one.

In summary, the implementation process has not yet really started, in Italy we have neither project nor funds.But at this point, couldn't high speed modernize and use the already existing lines, as decided by the French?
The answer is yes.The railway line already exists and works, from the Susa Valley to Turin.It is entirely electrified and double track.For years, Ferrovie dello Stato has been enhancing its transport capacity, both in number and size of trains that can pass through it.More than ten years ago, the expansion of the existing tunnel between Bardonecchia and Modane was completed, the shape of which is now suitable for the transit of the largest containers used in international trade ("high cube").The characteristics of the existing line in Italy are adequate for the transport capacity that will be present in the future on the French side.

But then what would be the purpose of the Turin – Lyon?A good question to which the simplistic communication campaigns of the proponents usually respond with a slogan:“to get trucks off the roads”.A completely acceptable objective, indeed immediately implementable using the existing line without waiting for the unreliable (as well as useless) construction of a new Turin – Lyon line.
But if we want to take this advertisement at its word, the heavy vehicle data speaks for itself.Every day many more trucks pass through the Turin ring road than those that pass through Mont Blanc and Frejus combined.If we also add cars, traffic multiplies by 10, due to the shortcomings of local public transport.

In fact, Turin is the Italian capital of air pollution.A good negative record achieved with decades of lack of investment in sustainable mobility for daily travel.To reduce the journey to Paris by half an hour (perhaps once a year, for those who can), we have forgotten about the daily needs of citizens.Turin lacks the money to build the second metro line:it's the money wasted on the Turin-Lyon match.