Lyon-Turin High Speed Line Makes ProgressAfter years of bitter arguing, an agreement on the controversial high speed railway line between Turin, Italy and Lyon, France has been announced on 29th June, 2008 following a breakthrough meeting between the rail line's planners, known as the Osservatorio tecnico (technical Observatory) headed by Mario Virano, an extraordinary commissioner, and 23 mayors of the Susa valley in the northern Italian region of Piedmont where the new line is to pass. Concrete proposals regarding the route of the future line have been presented to the Italian government on 29th July.The Observatory worked on the final document for 70 weeks, conducting 298 hearings and considering reports from 60 international experts. The agreement reached on the planning of the new line across the Susa valley and on the new transport policies for the territory is a long-awaited step forward since the project had ended in a stalemate in 2005. The Observatory's suggestions have sought to meet the objections of the Susa valley's residents by making a 57.1 km-long tunnel the centrepiece of the project. A meeting between the technical entity for the rail link and the trade unions to discuss the new route took place at Pracatinat. The agreement was then presented to the press at a conference in Turin. The agreement was reached almost two years after the body was set up in December 2006 further to the project being put on hold due to violent clashes between riot police and radical left activists, environmentalists, trade unionists and local communities.In 2007, the European Union granted EUR671.8 million for the project, shared between France and Italy. The cost of the Italo-French section is estimated at EUR7.2 billion. Freight transit through the Turin-Lyon corridor totals 28.5 million tonnes annually, whereof 22 million tonnes by road and 6.5 million tonnes on rail. This could jump to 66.2 million tonnes in 2030. It is predicted that the new line will transfer as many as 100,000 trucks on rail. Once the entire new line is operational, at an estimated cost of EUR15 billion, travel time between northern Italy and central France will be cut significantly and there will be a greater possibility for shipping goods by rail instead of by road. It is hoped the planning of the Lyon-Turin line will be completed in 2010 and its entry in service will not take place until 2018-2020. Click it/80. Visit www.infotorinolione.it and www.transpadana.orgThe new route of the international section in ItalyThe new Turin-Lyon rail link includes three sections: a section in France, from Lyon to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, an international section, from Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to the Susa lower valley, and a section in Italy from the Susa lower valley to Settimo Torinese.The Pracatinat agreement reached on 29th June does not give the go-ahead to any route but the new study amends the project presented to Brussels in the summer of 2007 by the then minister for infrastructure, Antonio Di Pietro, and reduces drastically the land consumption because it uses either the right-of-ways of the existing line or land already occupied by other infrastructure.The entrance/exit of the base tunnel will be located west of Susa, precisely next to the Mompantero highway tunnel. The former government's idea of choosing Chiomonte for the start/end of the international cross-border tunnel is therefore discarded to the benefit of the initial idea of a tunnel on the left side of the Dora river. If, as it is likely, the project follows the guidelines of the Observatory, the base tunnel will then be approx. 4 km longer than first thought, from 53.1 km in the original project to the 57.1 km now, whereof 12.1 km on the Italian territory.In the route envisaged by planners, the international station of the Turin-Lyon line would be in Susa. Susa will also become an intermodal stop with shuttles to the tourist and skiing resorts in the upper valley. The station will be connected with the old railroad, trunk roads SS 24 and SS 25 and highway A32. The international station will be located near the A32 junction in East Susa. A unique corridor closely linked to the highway is created to safeguard the urban area.The 2.8 km open air section in the plain of Susa, where the Susa station and all the associated services for its operation will be located, will also be the site from where the exploration tunnel - first envisaged in Venaus - will be bored. Once this tunnel is completed, construction of the base tunnel will commence immediately to shorten construction times.From the future international station in Susa, the line will cross the Orsiera natural park in a 11.4 km tunnel. The second part of the international section will begin next to the Prapontin tunnel to emerge to light eleven kilometres further east in Villar Focchiardo near the so-called chiuse (literally meaning locks in Italian), a kind of fortifications built by the Longobards. The length of the tunnel will thereby avoid the construction of an emergency site and the Mattie access adit. Further east, the new railroad will cross in tunnel the Dora river. Before the Sant' Antonino station, where the new line meets the old one, the new line will be buried. The line will travel to Turin almost at the centre of the valley, on the right side of the river, beneath the tracks of the conventional line. The conventional line, in accordance with the commitments taken with the Susa valley mayors, will be converted into a sort of metro service that will connect the valley to Turin. The new Sant' Antonino station becomes the terminus of the valley's metro.What still remains to be defined is the route of the new line to Orbassano's freight terminal. One possibility is a branch off the passenger line starting in Buttigliera and a crossing of the morainic hill to arrive in Orbassano. Alternatively, the line could carry on up to the Pronda railway yard, almost at the entrance of Turin, and then freight trains would bifurcate to Orbassano while the passenger line will use the cross-city tunnel (scheduled to be finished in 2012) to reach the new station at Porta Susa. Another fundamental issue resolved by the agreement reached by the Observatory is the construction of the rail tunnel under Corso Marche in west Turin and the construction of a northern bypass to Settimo Torinese. This would sort out the issue of the crossing of Settimo by freight trains.In principle, the international section should be 72 km long - with a variation of 3 km maximum according to the route that will eventually be chosen. A study on the transport policies for the Susa valley coordinated by the Turin province puts at EUR800 million the budget necessary to implement the Susa valley transportation programme. Visit www.regione.piemonte.it/torinolione No TAVSupposed to reduce road traffic, why does the Lyon-Turin rail scheme find such a huge opposition? The Susa valley is just 1.5 km wide, with the Dora river, the existing conventional railway, highway A32, one national road (SS 24) and a high voltage power line going all through this narrow path. Work would go on until at least the end of 2018, threatening the quietness of the mountains and the tracks would divide a valley inhabited by those who have acquired a strong identity for themselves.The Susa valley residents want to protect their land and prevent tunnelling through mountains rich with uranium and asbestos. Mount Musinè contains asbestos and Mount Ambin contains uranium and local communities have been afraid that building new tunnels there could cause health problems and may damage the environment. A sticker reading "We defend the water, no TAV" (the anti high speed rail slogan) According to the studies and measurements carried out by independent experts, the probability to encounter asbestos-bearing rock during excavation of the base tunnel is close to zero. Excavation of hydroelectric and highway tunnels near the future Turin-Lyon route did not reveal the presence of any asbestos. However, specific complementary checks have already been programmed in case that asbestos-bearing material is found. Even the risk that tunnelling through the mountain will release uranium is marginal since neither during the numerous analyses on the rock samples, nor during the study of the natural gamma radioactivity levels measured in the bedrock (50 km in total), or even during the excavation of the hydroelectric and road tunnels in the close area, have radioactivity levels above average been measured. Nevertheless, it has been decided to set up a protection procedure and a continuous monitoring system.The agreement is not to the liking of the No TAV movement (TAV is the Italian acronym for high speed train) and does not mean that from now on there will only be smooth sailing. The No TAV opponents say nothing is changed and they still plan to oppose the project with every means at their disposal. The 57 meetings with the mayors of the 23 towns directly affected by the project have failed to dissuade these opponents, who have mounted sometimes violent protests involving up to 80,000 people over the past three years. "What is coming out of the Observatory are only suggestions," declared Alberto Perino, one of the movement's leaders. "It changes absolutely nothing for us. We will always be against the TAV", he added.The No TAV activists are convinced that the base tunnel isn't needed and that the old (1871) rail line under Mount Cenis will always be enough for traffic that, they say, is not going to increase. In addition, there are fears that the project would create long-standing debt as well as "causing considerable ecological damage by draining the valley's water resources." Environmental damages during the massive tunnelling of the Mugello on the Florence-Bologna high speed line have been a major issue. The tunnels punctured underground water channels and caused the drying up of springs and fountains long used by rural Appennine residents. Current advance of the Saint-Martin-la-Porte adit Present status in ItalyThe agreement signed by France and Italy to construct the new line dates back to January 2001. While construction works first commenced in France in 2002, the project has been at a standstill in Italy until now because no agreement had been found with the communities in Susa valley directly concerned by the works.The agreement has speeded up decision-making from the Italian government. On 29th July, the government gave its final approval to the Observatory's proposal of continuing its work. Phase two has therefore officially started. Preliminary planning for the whole line and the publication of the invitations to tender is foreseen by next autumn. From January 2009, preliminary planning of the new line should be on tracks - including the base tunnel with entrance/exit at Susa - which should take about 12 months. Then, after joint political endorsement by the government and the local administrations, the project will move to detailed planning, a step which is expected to last 6-7 months. Once this stage is concluded and according to its outcome, the ground surveying prior to the actual construction of the Turin-Lyon line will start in end 2010. Meanwhile, in 2009, specific improvement works in the stations on the old line will be carried out to enhance the comfort, efficiency and interchange capacity. The new high speed line will run along the areas, sites and territories already crossed by the existing means of transport, which means that it will follow the route of highway A32 and the existing railroad. Current advance of the La Praz adit and exploration tunnel Present status in FranceAfter the declaration of public utility enabling construction to start on the French part of the Lyon-Turin rail link project was granted on 7th December 2007, the declaration of public utility for the section from Lyon Saint-Exupéry airport to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne is awaited. This section will connect with the Lyon metropolitan railway bypass and will give access to the future international tunnel. Visit www.transalpine.comIn the Maurienne valley, the boring of the exploration and access tunnels to the path of the base tunnel makes headway. More than eight kilometres has been excavated to date at the three sites. The hole through of the 4 km Modane-Villarodin/Bourget tunnel, commenced in July 2002, was celebrated on 1st November 2007.In Saint-Martin-la-Porte, 1,922 out of 2,280 metres has been excavated as of 5th September 2008 (1,873 m as of 10th July, 1,913 m in mid-August). Les Tunnelling started in July 2003. Excavation work should be completed in the middle of 2010. The site employs some 125 staff, including subcontractors. Work continues round the clock in three 8-hour shifts, seven days a week.The geology consists of a highly fractured carboniferous rock mass characterised by a squeezing behaviour that caused substantial convergence (up to two metres). These ground conditions should continue up to the foot of the access tunnel, with a mountain cover increasing from 200 to 700 metres. The situation required significant changes to the excavation method and ground reinforcement after the first 800 metres.Tunnelling is more complex and requires shorter excavation sequences and ground reinforcement in several phases: installation of a pre-reinforcement of the face consisting of fibreglass rods (phase 0), excavation with mechanical excavator in 1 m-long rounds and installation of a flexible support (anchoring bolts and sliding TH steel arches) that bends in response to ground movements (phase 1), 30 metres behind the face, installation of the primary support (20-30 cm-thick shotcrete layer and deformable concrete elements) that yields slightly as the overburden settles, thereby allowing the forces to come into equilibrium (phase 2), 80 to 100 metres behind the face, installation of a concrete ring (rigid support) to prevent further deformation (phase 3). A specific formwork concrete has been designed and the final lining is made of a 5 m-long 1 m-thick unreinforced concrete ring. Visit www.ltf-sas.com/upload/File/STMARTINLAPORTE%20gb.pdfAt La Praz, advance has reached 2,111 out of 2,572 metres as of 5th September 2008 (1,961 m on 10th July, 2,085 m in mid-August). Construction commenced in November 2005. Click fr/11 & here. Visit www.ltf-sas.com/upload/File/La%20Praz%20ANGlight.pdf and www.descenderiedelapraz.fr 37/08.