The main rail border crossing between Italy and France, the so-called Frejus Railway, has been closed for almost a year due to a landslide in August 2023. The timeline for a reopening has changed throughout time and now, once again, estimates claim that a full reopening won’t be possible until the first quarter of 2025.
“Despite a strong mobilization of the SNCF and Savoie Department teams, the date of the reopening of the link is not envisaged before the first quarter of 2025, and no longer in the autumn of 2024 as initially planned”, said La Transalpine Lyon-Turin on LinkedIn. Rumours about a possible delayed reopening to 2025 were already circulating in January.
Landslide area is not safe yet
The main reason behind the shifted timetable is that the operations to purge and secure the cliff of La Praz, where the landslide occurred, are more complicated than expected. The cavities found in the central area of the slope are quite unstable, meaning that additional work is needed to make it safe again. Until this process is complete, it will be impossible to start fixing the infrastructure.
The landslide, the largest in the area in 45 years, occurred on 27 August 2023 in Saint-André à La Praz, near the French-Italian border. The railway running in the area is part of the main connection between Italy and France, running through the Bardonecchia-Modane border crossing. It needs to be mentioned that the situation could have been even worse. For example, the landslide did not damage the rail tunnel near the location of the landslide, called Tunnel de la Brèche. This is a positive development because if the tunnel had been damaged, the timeline for a full reopening may have been significantly delayed.