The France-Italy railway line passing through the Frejus tunnel will not reopen until “the first quarter of 2025″ according to a LinkedIn post by La Transalpine Lyon-Turin, a committee set up to promote passenger and freight railway services between the two aforementioned cities.
Readers will recall that last August, a huge landslide put a halt to passenger and freight trains going through the Frejus tunnel between France and Italy.
“Despite a strong mobilisation of the SNCF and Savoie Department teams, the date of the reopening of the link is not envisaged before the first quarter of 2025, and longer than the autumn of 2024 as initially planned. The work of purging and securing the cliff of La Praz, prior to any human intervention at the foot of the cliff for obvious safety reasons, has been more complicated than expected,” writes La Transalpine Lyon-Turin, citing the authorities responsible for the tunnel.
It is said that the unstable cavities discovered a few weeks ago following a mining operation are proving to be much larger than expected, and additional work will be required to address the issue.
This is important, writes La Transalpine Lyon-Turin, as only once the mountain slope is 100% secure will workers be able to carry out the work to put the line back into service.
Ultimately, this has caused the opening of the tunnel to be put back to next year, and rail freight operators will have to deal with a continuation of the status quo for longer.
Photo: Poudou99, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons