Sunday August 27, 15,000 cubic meters of rock rolled down the Praz cliff in Savoie. The landslide did not hurt or kill anyone because the sensors, installed in 2019 after a similar event, served their purpose. But it made a collateral victim: the Mont-Cenis railway tunnel. The damage to the roof of the structure, the signaling and the rails led to the closure for “at least two months” of the only transalpine railway linking France and Italy for freight and passengers.
The entrance to the Mont-Cenis railway tunnel after the landslide of August 27. The structure and the current Lyon-Turin railway line are closed “for at least two months”.
AFP
Sunday August 27, 15,000 cubic meters of rock rolled down the Praz cliff in Savoie. The landslide did not hurt or kill anyone because the sensors, installed in 2019 after a similar event, served their purpose. But it made a collateral victim: the Mont-Cenis railway tunnel. The damage to the roof of the structure, the signaling and the rails led to the closure for “at least two months” of the only transalpine railway linking France and Italy for freight and passengers.
The entrance to the Mont-Cenis railway tunnel after the landslide of August 27. The structure and the current Lyon-Turin railway line are closed “for at least two months”.
AFP
To make matters worse, the landslide cut off the departmental 1006 which passes below as well as the A 43 (Lyon-Modane-Italy). Traffic was quickly restored on the motorway but only for light vehicles, preventing heavy goods vehicles from accessing the Fréjus road tunnel (which links Modane, five kilometers away, to Bardonecchia in Italy). Result: a massive postponement of trucks towards the Mont-Blanc tunnel with several days of monster traffic jams in both directions, leading Bison futé to advise carriers linking France and northern Italy to do the big (and expensive) thing. detour via the Rhône valley and the Côte d’Azur.
Works at Mont-Blanc
Announced for this weekend by the French Minister of Transport, the reopening to trucks of the A 43 and the Fréjus road tunnel should reduce pressure on the Mont-Blanc tunnel, including maintenance work, announced from September 4, had, as a matter of urgency, been postponed to 2024 by mutual agreement between Paris and Rome.
Finally, this work, on this structure closed for two years after the fire of 1999, will be able to begin. But they will be reduced to seven weeks instead of fifteen, indicated Clément Beaune. It is impossible, in fact, to do without the two transalpine tunnels for too long while the railway line is now cut indefinitely.
Stéphane Guggino is the general delegate of La Transalpine, the committee for the Lyon-Turin rail link.
The Transalpine
While climate change is weakening the Alps (a section of the Aiguille du Midi collapsed this summer), the vulnerability of the Mont-Cenis line and tunnel, which date from Napoleon III, has never seemed so big. “The line is dilapidated, exposed and its capacities are limited,” summarizes Stéphane Guggino. For the general delegate of La Transalpine, the association which defends the new line and the Lyon-Turin tunnel, the landslide of August 27 requires hastening the execution of a “strategic project”, but which still raises opposition on the French.
90% of freight on the road
The new 57-kilometer tunnel which will connect Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to the Susa valley (Italy) will be delivered in 2032. The tunnel boring machines have already drilled thirty kilometers of galleries, including twelve of the final tunnel. “Its construction is irreversible and if this tunnel existed, there would be no risk of a railway break between the two countries,” argues Stéphane Guggino who notes that passengers traveling to Turin from Lyon have, in the coming months, no other solution than to go through Zurich (Switzerland), nine hours by train.
Under the mountain between Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and the Susa Valley in Italy, tunnel boring machines have already dug 30 kilometers of galleries, including 12 of the final rail tunnel, 57 kilometers long.
MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP
As for goods, it is more than ever by road that they will cross the Alps, to the despair of elected officials who, like the mayor of Chamonix, dream of an effective “modal shift” to relieve congestion in the valleys. Because 92% of the tonnage (44 million tonnes out of 47) travels by truck, leaving a starving share for rail. Which makes transport economist Yves Crozet, close to the French Road Union, whose think tank he chaired, say that the closure of the Mont-Cenis tunnel for work “is not going to change much” .
“Disaster roads”
The economist concedes that the new infrastructure will secure convoys. But refuses to believe that it will switch traffic to rail. For what ? “Because this tunnel is a golden link on a rusty chain. » Yves Crozet means by this that on the French side, the routes providing access to the tunnel from Lyon are “damaged” and that the construction of 120 kilometers of new line, which he estimates at ten billion euros, makes the project “ a barrel of the Danaids.”
According to Yves Crozet, “this tunnel is a golden link on a rusty chain”
A panoramic view of the Lyon-Turin tunnel construction site in Saint-Martin-la-Porte (Savoie).
MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP
The project, deemed of “European interest” by Brussels, aims to capture traffic coming from Spain and southern Europe
The argument made the delegate from La Transalpine jump: “We know that access on the French side is not up to par and can be a bottleneck, but the solution is to invest, not to do nothing. » Stéphane Guggino recalls that the project, deemed of “European interest” by Brussels since 2004, aims to capture traffic coming from Spain and southern Europe, currently sucked up by the Rhône valley. And that a modern tunnel without access roads at height would be nonsense.
The alternative via Dijon
On the other side of the Alps, the debate is settled. “The Italians, who are devoting a large part of the post-Covid European recovery plan to infrastructure, will deliver the access roads between Turin and Susa at the same time as the tunnel,” specifies the delegate from La Transalpine. “The budgets are there, the work is progressing, because this new link is of vital interest for the Italian economy which will suffer the repercussions of the temporary closure of the Mont-Cenis tunnel. »
Impatience is also palpable in Italy and Brussels regarding the French delays. Because since the DUP (Declaration of Public Utility) of 2013 on access to the tunnel, the project has been slipping. Certainly, the Minister of Transport Clément Beaune reaffirmed the need to create these accesses. But Paris was unable to reassure its partners by proposing to resolve the problem via the renovation – for 700 million euros – of the Dijon-Chambéry-Modane line: “If this was done to the detriment of access to Lyon, it would change the nature of the project which would become a Dijon-Turin”, worries Stéphane Guggino.
Before January 15, 2024
The Transalpine delegate underlines that, even renovated, the Dijon-Modane route would not meet the standards required to circulate the noria of freight trains – up to 160 per day – that the Italians plan to launch across the Alps. But time is running out. “Europe has put money on the table for the studies, but if the detailed preliminary project is not submitted by January 15, 2024, it could withdraw, which would put the Lyon-Turin in danger,” adds Stéphane Guggino.
In September 2019, the tunnel boring machine intended to drill the Lyon-Turin galleries was presented on the French side in Saint-André (Savoie), not far from the place where the landslide of August 27, 2023 occurred.
JEAN-PIERRE CLATOT/AFP
An Ifop survey commissioned by the project’s promoters indicates that 81% of Rhône-Alpes residents are in favor of this major railway project, including, and in the same proportion, respondents close to the two France Insoumise and EELV environmentalists parties, whose leaders are still say they are opposed to Lyon-Turin. Since the landslide of August 27, however, the discordant voices have become much more discreet.
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