Turin–Lyon high-speed railway

The Turin–Lyon high-speed railway is a planned 270 km (170 mi)-long, 220 km/h (140 mph) railway line that will connect the two cities and link the Italian and French high-speed rail networks. The core of the project is a 57 kilometres (35 mi) base tunnel crossing the Alps between Susa valley in Italy and Maurienne in France. The tunnel will be one of the longest rail tunnels in the world, behind just the 57.1 km Gotthard Base Tunnel, and it represents one third of the estimated overall cost of the project.

Like the Swiss NRLA project, the line aims to both transfer freight traffic across the Alps from trucks to rail and provide faster passenger transport. It is part of the "Mediterranean Corridor"—previously "Corridor 6"—of the TEN-T Trans-European conventional rail network, since its design speed of 220 km/h (140 mph) is slightly below the 250 km/h (160 mph) threshold used by the European Commission to define high-speed railways. The new line will considerably shorten the journey times, and its reduced gradients and much wider curves compared to the existing line will allow heavy freight trains to transit between the two countries at 100 km/h (62 mph) and with much reduced energy costs.

The project has been criticized for its cost, because traffic (both by motorway and rail) was decreasing, for potential environmental risks during the construction of the tunnel, and because airplanes would still, after including time to and from the airport and through security, be slightly faster over the Milan-Paris route. A 2012 report by the French Court of Audit questioned the realism of the costs estimates and traffic forecasts.

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