During the 31st SaMoTer, this highly-regarded and extremely coveted award will be assigned to TELT

SAMOTER INTERNATIONAL AWARD

Since 1973 - the year of the first international award - SaMoTer has rewarded significant projects and works in terms of technological innovation and scientific research in the construction sector on a national and international scale.

During the 31st Samoter, this highly-regarded and extremely coveted award will be assigned to TELT, the Italian-French public promoter for the construction and management of the international section of the Turin-Lyon line. The company is 50% owned by the French Ministry of Ecological Transition and 50% by the Italian State through the Ferrovie dello Stato Group.

The International Award (Wednesday 3 May, SaMoTer LAB Plenary Hall - Pavilion 12, 15:30) will celebrate the work under construction, a crucial node for trade and the mobility of people across the Alps.

TELT shares the European objective of creating a new, faster and more efficient transport network that equally ensures a reduction in emissions. The new Turin-Lyon railway line slots into the new programme of major works conceived and built as a technical-engineering challenge to create resilient infrastructures that integrates human needs with those of the planet.

These mega-projects simultaneously have to reconcile territorial development from the construction stage itself – when inconveniences for local communities are greater but investments in economic and human resources are higher – and innovation, which seeks to regenerate solutions in energy, housing, industrial or transport industries from the completion of these works through to the following decades, all inspired by sustainability.

The international section of the new Turin-Lyon freight and passenger railway line is keen to become the most advanced response to these two ambitious missions. The expression “single construction site” sums up TELT’s commitment to aligning the project, the companies and the system of regulations between France and Italy, interpreting the construction stage of these works (65 km, of which 57.5 km underground) as a single entity that integrates and streamlines professional standards, methods and cultures.

 

The single construction site for the Turin-Lyon line today involves four main aspects:

  1. the bi-national nature of TELT, where management, the use of two languages and human resource management are perfectly balanced;
  2. the transnational anti-mafia regulations - the first of their kind in Europe - whereby the legal systems in Turin and Lyon can carry out preventive checks on companies working for TELT;
  3. the Mission-S programme focuses on occupational health and safety as an essential objective. It can only be ensured by sharing regulations and good practices in terms of training and innovation among everyone involved in the project, in the knowledge that it is possible to ensure there are no fatal injuries on the site;
  4. the bi-national management of excavated materials which, without derogating from Italian and French environmental regulations, envisages that rock materials extracted during the project will be re-used in other works (blocks for tunnel lining, railway embankments, concrete) regardless of the border; this fits into a circular economy perspective whereby fewer materials will have to be purchased from third parties as well as reduced soil consumption, with a positive impact in environmental and economic terms.

 

The infrastructure

The new Turin-Lyon railway line for goods and passengers is 270 km long (70% in France and 30% in Italy).

TELT is responsible for construction and management of the common cross-border section between Italy and France (65 km), from Susa (Piedmont) to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne (Savoy). The main work is the Moncenisio base tunnel (57.7 km long, 45 in France and 12.5 in Italy), the longest railway tunnel in the world (currently under construction).
The tunnel transforms the current mountain line into a kind of "plains" railway, thereby ensuring competitiveness for rail transport and consequently achieving energy savings and higher speeds.

The assignment of tenders for the excavation over the next ten years of the main equipped tunnel for goods and passenger railway services will the completed in 2023.

 

Facts & Figures
  • 162 km of tunnels to be excavated in total (19% already completed)
  • 57,5 km for the Moncenisio base tunnel, the main work in the cross-border section
  • more than 1,400 people working on 10 construction sites; at peak activity, the sites will employ 4,000 direct employees the same number indirectly across the entire construction chain
  • the cross-border section will cost 8.6 billion euros (2012 euros)

Furthermore, the Turin-Lyon line will:

  • take 1 million heavy trucks off Alpine roads
  • reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year
  • cut travel time for passengers: 1h 47” instead of 3h 47” for the Turin-Lyon section, 4h 30” instead of almost 7h for Milan-Paris, and about 4h instead of around 5h 30” for Turin-Paris