It is difficult, upon arriving in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in Savoie, to imagine the connection between the vast construction site stretching out like a broad line and the digging of the future 57 km Franco-Italian tunnel from Lyon to Turin. “We are preparing the interconnection here to connect the new line to the historic railway network on the French side, explains Sébastien Fournier, head of project management at SNCF Réseau, the client who entrusted Eiffage with more than 200 million euros of civil engineering works. The main challenge is to create a 4 km ramp while limiting the maximum slope to 12.5‰.” Starting from the bottom of the valley, the elevated track, several metres high, will cross the Arc, a torrent often subject to flooding, before running under the mountain to Italy.
Intended to accommodate a bundle of four tracks, this structure is not very aesthetic despite its elaborate facings. At the beginning of September, the construction site is in full swing with an important deadline in sight. “This autumn we will be launching a metal rail bridge to cross a tributary of the Arc. Made in Alsace, the beams arrived one by one in exceptional convoys,” says Mathieu Carry, the project director at Eiffage. Why such a pace? In 2026, this ramp will temporarily accommodate the current track to Italy, whose rails will therefore be moved.
Importance given to freight
This vast project, which began in 2018, affects all the railway facilities, as well as the departmental road. In reality, it combines a series of complex operations until 2032. The construction of the future international station with its service tracks is one of them. The necessary construction of a new branch line serving the Trimet aluminium plant (built by Pechiney) supplied by a daily freight train is another. Inevitably, the promoters of the Lyon-Turin, whose main business will be rail freight, are paying the greatest attention to an industrial site whose competitiveness depends on rail. With a total cost of 800 million euros, this local project is part of that of the base tunnel, the estimate for which has just been updated to 11.1 billion euros. Its implementation has been progressing at a snail’s pace since the 1990s. But the milestone reached in July with the granting of a 700 million euro subsidy by the European Union promises to accelerate things. The drilling of the structure consisting of two tubes can now really begin.
So far, the study and recognition phase, also subsidized, has enabled the achievement of “14 kilometers out of the 164 plannedsummarizes Lionel Gros, the deputy general manager of TELT, the Franco-Italian project manager. Everything is ready since “We have awarded 100% of civil engineering contracts for more than 4 billion euroshe continues. The last lot, the largest with 2.9 billion, which concerns the tunnel equipment, is currently being awarded.” As for the date of commissioning of the tunnel, please believe it: it is for 2033.
“This seems illusory when you know that it took the Swiss 15 years to dig the Saint-Gothard tunnel.judges the activist Daniel Ibanez, opponent of the project. But the main thing for its promoters is to make the project irreversible.” It is a certainty that it is not the new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier from Savoy, who will call into question the Lyon-Turin. He has supported it from the beginning.
Source: www.usinenouvelle.com
