Terzo Valico dei Giovi

railway

Cities

Genoa

Italy

Tortona

Italy

Distance

53km

new

53km

rehabilitated

– km

existing

– km

Cost

$15.4b

$15,390,000,000

Phases

underConstruction, 2027

Objective

To remove a historic mountain bottleneck by creating a low-gradient "flatland" railway. This dramatically expands freight capacity and cuts rail transit times between the Ligurian ports (Genoa) and major northern industrial hubs like Milan and Turin, seamlessly shifting freight from trucks to rail. It is explicitly designated as a high-speed priority section of the Rhine-Alpine Corridor to eliminate the Apennine mountain bottleneck between the Port of Genoa and northern Europe.

Description

A brand-new 53-kilometer high-speed, high-capacity railway line across the Italian Apennines, anchored by the massive 27-kilometer Valico Tunnel, consisting of twin single-track tubes connected by cross-passages every 500 meters. EU funding provided through the Recovery and Resilience Facility. (IT-Rail-0114 project)

History

Conceptualised in the late 1980s to bypass the steep, slow historic Giovi rail passes, the project was approved by Italy's CIPE in 2001 under the Legge Obiettivo. It suffered a decade of delays due to local environmental protests regarding asbestos risk in the excavated rock and investigations into procurement procedures before construction finally broke ground in 2012.