Perhaps never before in Italian history has a public work been so useless in such an obvious way as the TAV in the Susa Valley. An engineering feat that will cost tens of billions of euro at the expense of the tax payer, on a stretch that is already served by railways and motorways, to get ready for an increase in goods traffic that will never happen, but that in fact will decrease. The TAV will end in twenty years time, when those responsible for this disastrous choice will no longer be with us. It will leave a shocking generational debt that we will pay for with our taxes and it will leave a valley turned upside down for ever. A tunnel that is 57 kilometres long that will modify the structure of the territory, including the sources of water. The funding from the EU that the politicians are talking about so much, will be useful just for a small gratuity for the companies and the mafia infiltrations that are sure to happen. In an Italy where the commuter trains are like cattle trucks and the stations are ever more dilapidated, this waste of public money, four times the amount for the Messina Bridge, is crying out for a vendetta. But if the TAV is no use, in fact it destroys, so what is the point? Only to those who will take the money and those that will let them have the money: politicians and construction companies! Tomorrow I will be in the Susa Valley to support the inhabitants. It will be difficult!
I’m publishing a letter from “Ambientevalsusa” and “Movimento No Tav” giving the reasoning of the people of the Susa Valley. Download and distribute the flier with the complete text. After reading this, no person of sane mind will want this havoc of the TAV anymore.

Dear Beppe,
We are writing to you from the Susa Valley, where at 3 o’clock in the morning on 19 January 2010, one thousand five hundred police officers in Susa have militarily taken over a private area inside the motorway link road to install one of the famous drills that should check out the terrain for the TAV line. Our elderly people in the valley say that only thieves and criminals move around at night; the people that want the TAV are evidently following the same criteria. On Sunday, the bipartisan party of the TAV, the Right, the Left, the construction companies and the various contractors will meet up at Lingotto in Turin for the famous “SI TAV” {yes to the TAV} that Chiamparino has been calling for for years. OK. Let them march. In the end they will enclose themselves in their own fortress, they will enter if invited, and it’ll be the usual well known people of politics and a few friends. The usual restricted family of business people accompanied by many people who are evidently not well informed about the damage connected to the TAV. All those of us who have been following the argument for years, feel morally obliged to tell people about the technical, economic and environmental information on this specific topic. We are inviting you to come to the valley and we are asking for your help to make known the information that follows about the infamous project of the Turin-Lyons line, information that the newspapers are obviously not giving.
The detailed information is all available on Internet websites. We are saying “thank you” to you in the name of everyone in the redaction of Ambientevalsusa and Movimento No Tav.”
Claudio Giorno

These are the main technical economic and environmental items of information that are unknown to most people:

Usefulness – The current international line between Turin and Modane is used at 30% of its actual capacity and the motorway is used at less than 50% capacity.
Traffic forecast – Up until now the traffic forecasts made by the project workers have turned out to be erroneous. They are based on the concept of infinite growth that says that for every extra point of GDP, there’ll be a growth in traffic of 1.4 points. According to the estimates, the current line should be saturated already by this year. This has not happened. Growth still does not exist and goods transport decreases constantly and consequently the need for transport.
According to LTF {Lyon Turin Ferroviaire} the future line would find stability on its balance sheet with 40 million tons of transported goods a year. The current line can transport at least 20 million. Today 4.8 million are carried. Even by transferring all the goods currently transported on the motorways to the railways that would get to the utilization of the current railway of about 50% of its capacity.

Costs - Mauro Moretti , the CEO of Trenitalia has declared that the estimated cost of the line is 120 million per kilometre, that’s 3 or 4 times more in relation to the average costs in France (see the article in “Il Sole 24 ore” on 13 January 2010). Furthermore, the estimated costs generally increase 2 to 3 times by the end of the work. Italy has also signed up to an economic agreement by which 65% of the international part would be charged to our country.

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