FRANCE: Upon completion of a public inquiry on February 28, the French government, SNCF and the local authorities involved have signed off the €3·5bn funding package provisionally agreed last year for the Ligne Nouvelle Provence Côte d’Azur programme to enhance capacity in the Marseille – Nice corridor.
The funding covers phases 1 and 2 of the programme, which is broadly focused on rebuilding the existing Mediterranean coastal route through Toulon while also decongesting the hubs at Marseille, Nice and Toulon. The largest single element will be a new tunnel beneath Marseille to reduce the need for through trains to reverse at the existing Saint-Charles terminus. This should allow more passenger services to operate and make the timetable more resilient.
The key interventions are:
- building a new station for regional and high speed services at Nice-Aéroport;
- · creating a dedicated commuter network around Toulon;
- · remodelling work at Marseille Saint-Charles station to eliminate conflicting moves between westbound and eastbound trains, enabling more services to run;
- · building an underground through station at Marseille Saint-Charles, offering a 15 min reduction in journey times between the city and Toulon and Nice;
- · increasing the frequency of services between Cannes, Nice and Menton, turning the route into a ‘Côte d’Azur shuttle’.
Work on site is scheduled to begin in 2024.
For the moment the third and fourth phases of LNPCA remain unfunded. These envisage new construction between Cannes and Nice, a section of new line from Aubagne to Toulon running further inland that the existing route and another stretch of new line from Le Muy near Les Arcs to Cannes.
