Italian company Trenitalia will maintain two daily round trips between Paris and Lyon next week after finding a maintenance solution in France for its Frecciarossa high-speed trains, cut off from their Italian technical base by a rockslide in Savoie. Initially, Trenitalia had announced Friday during the day suspending its three daily connections between Paris and Lyon, the cut of the railway preventing it from ensuring the maintenance of its trains in Italy.
The Italian company provides five round trips per day between Paris and Lyon, two of them being extended to Chambéry, Modane, Turin and Milan. These two Paris-Milan connections have already been suspended since Wednesday. “The Trenitalia group urgently mobilized a team of experts from Milan to carry out part of the maintenance of the Frecciarossa trains in France. This mobilization allows Trenitalia to maintain, with its highest safety standards, the circulation of four Paris-Lyon trains (two round trips) out of the usual six (three round trips)”, indicates a press release released late Friday evening.
Trenitalia “is constantly monitoring the progress of the situation with the local authorities and the infrastructure manager for the rehabilitation of the tracks in the Maurienne, and is doing everything possible to resume traffic as soon as possible” adds the press release . The SNCF Voyageurs TGV Paris-Turin-Milan are also canceled until further notice. The railway line was cut off by a spectacular rockslide – as were the parallel A43 and D1006 motorways – on Sunday in the Maurienne valley, interrupting relations between France and Italy through the Fréjus tunnel .
If the motorway must be reopened within eight days, the rehabilitation of the railway will take “at least two months” according to SNCF Réseau. Travelers wishing to travel to Italy by train must pass through Zurich in Switzerland or Nice. International road traffic is transferred to the Mont-Blanc tunnel. Trenitalia is the first European operator to enter the French rail market, in December 2021.