French-Italian cross-border rail link study awarded EU funding

The European Union will support with €2.3 million from the TEN-T Programme a series of early stage studies to help future improvements to cross-border rail services between Mandelieu in France and Ventimiglia in Italy.

The initiative, which was selected for funding under the 2012 TEN-T Annual Call, consists of general (traffic analysis, feasibility studies, technical and environmental issues), preliminary (detailing the improvements selected by the general studies) and pre-project (finalising the improvements provisionally agreed under the preliminary studies) studies for the Mandelieu-Ventimiglia line.

This 74 km line (67 km in France and 7 km in Italy) is heavily used by commuters and tourists – in particular those travelling to the Principality of Monaco. The section between Nice and Monaco is the busiest in France (outside the Paris metropolitan area) in terms of regional train ridership.

The proposed study will be used for decision-making with regards to the future improvement works to be conducted on the line.

The studies will be monitored by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) and are set to be completed by the end of 2015.