30 years on, is the Lyon-Turin rail project still looking so green?

The high-speed Lyon-Turin rail link involves excavating what will be the world's longest rail tunnel, but will its carbon footprint be too damaging?

Transcript

00:00 Fewer trucks and more trains. An appealing idea, and yet, since its announcement about

00:05 30 years ago, the high-speed Lyon-Turin rail link involving the excavation of what will

00:10 be the world's longest rail tunnel at over 57 kilometres has been a subject of division.

00:15 "The climate emergency is that there are 3 million heavy loads that pass each year on

00:18 the road between France and Italy. If you don't make a tunnel, you keep the trucks on

00:23 the roads."

00:24 However, for the project's detractors, the environmental damage far outweighs the benefits.

00:30 "The evaluation was also calculated. To build the whole Lyon tunnel, there is a net contribution

00:39 of 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. The estimates in the project speak of

00:45 the amount of water, about 600-1000 litres per second that could come out of the tunnel

00:52 in the next 10 years. It's a bit like if a nice piece of Turin or a nice piece of

00:58 Lyon were to risk having less water coming in."

01:01 "Today, this drainage represents a significant amount of the flow of the Lark River. In relation

01:07 to all the ecological benefits I just mentioned, that is, the modal report of the trucks on

01:12 the roads, fewer road accidents, less infrastructure wear, the reliability of the exchanges, the

01:19 proximity of the people and the territories, we can consider that it's an investment that

01:23 we can make."

01:24 There is already a railway line connecting Lyon to Turin. Perched in the mountains, it

01:29 allows around 50 trains to pass through the Fréjus tunnel each day, but that's many fewer

01:34 than what the project foresees for the new tunnel. However, opponents claim that the

01:38 existing link is underused.

01:40 "What is certain is that, yes, today, by the line that is already in place, without the

01:45 need to create the tunnel, we could get through what we need."

01:49 In both Italy and France, issues related to the massive construction project fuel opposition.

01:55 "The daily lives of the small villages that are crossed by the transport, waste or

02:02 goods trucks are obviously disrupted. Today, it's just work, waste, and there is a

02:09 huge waste of landscapes that allow for life."

02:15 [SWOOSH]