The works in the tunnel between Courmayeur and Chamonix have been postponed, thanks to an agreement between Rome and Paris. It will allow trucks to continue to circulate to and from France. Therefore, traffic will no longer be blocked from 4 September to 18 December, as was said in recent days.
It will be decided next week
The works in question - announces the Italian Ministry of Transport - will probably be postponed within 12 months. However, the decision will be formalized by Intergovernmental Conference which should meet on Monday 4 September. He pointed it out Clement Beaune, the French Minister of Transport, who ruled: "We'll talk about it next week". This is what Beaune expressed after meeting the local administrators of Val Maurienne, just across the border with Italy, where a landslide occurred last Sunday which caused serious problems for the Italian-French transalpine connections. Here, huge boulders hit the railway line and cut off the A43 motorway. In Savoy, the French minister also announced that "for at least two months, it will certainly not be possible to restore railway traffic" given that, at the moment, it is impossible to access the tunnel "in complete safety".
“The two tunnels cannot be closed at the same time”
The postponement of the works on the Mont Blanc tunnel had been requested in Paris by the same Matteo Salvini. The news was also welcomed by the regional council of Valle d'Aosta, worried about the economic repercussions that could arise if the reopening overlaps with one of the fundamental periods for tourism, the pre-Christmas period. Furthermore, according to Beaune, the two tunnels cannot be closed at the same time, otherwise, even for Paris, the consequences would be unacceptable.
Work continues on the A43 motorway
Meanwhile, work continues to restore circulation on the French A43 motorway, which is essential for ensuring the passage of heavy vehicles to Fréjus da Modane. “I hope – said the French minister – that it can reopen within eight days. It will be necessary to refine this estimate because before the reopening there are necessarily safety precautionary measures to be taken” and the “weather aspects” must be considered.
However "in the next few days it is very probable that the A43 will not be able to reopen in the normal way". In fact, part of the roadway will be occupied by a wall of containers which will serve to protect vehicles in transit, a technique already used in 2018. In the meantime, the long queues of vehicles heading to the Mont Blanc tunnel continue. We recall that the decision to close it from 4 September to 18 December was taken to allow for the reconstruction of two portions of the vault, each three hundred meters long, inside the tunnel that connects Courmayeur, in Valle d'Aosta, to Chamonix, in the French department of Haute-Savoie.
(Photo: Mont Blanc Tunnel, Facebook Page)
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