ITALY: Project promoter Tunnel Euralpin Lyon Torino has awarded a €1bn contract to the consortium of Itinera, Ghella and Spie Batignolles to bore the 10 km section from Susa in Italy to the French border, TELT announced on August 31.
The resulting bore will form part of the 57·5 km Mont Cenis base tunnel through the Alps, being built as part of plans to develop a faster, flatter route between Lyon and Torino.
Itinera is the lead contractor with a share of 41%, Ghella has a 39% share and Spie Batignolles’ part is 20%. This is the first Italian section of the main tunnelling task to be let. The 22 km Villarodin-Bourget/Modane – Italian border section and the 23 km Saint-Martin-la-Porte/La Praz – Modane section had been awarded in July 2021.
The mixed-traffic twin-bore base tunnel will have a 250 km/h design speed. The latest contract covers excavation of 10 km of twin-bore running tunnels, as well as interconnections between the two tubes and emergency shafts, which take the total length to be excavated to 30 km. Of this, 18 km is to be excavated using tunnel-boring machine and 12 km through conventional mechanical methods.
‘Today we reach a historic milestone for the Alpine crossings: with this contract, the excavation of the Mont Cenis base tunnel, the work is also starting in Italy’, said Maurizio Bufalini, General Director of TELT.
