RAILWAY RELATED IMPACTS: THE TURIN-LYON HIGH-SPEED RAIL CASE

One of the best known cases of struggle for the com- mons in Italy, characterized by bitter controversies over the last 20 years, is the popular opposition to the construc- tion of the High Speed Railway line (HSR, "TAV" in Italian) between Turin and Lyon, designed to cross the Susa Valley (at the Italian-French border) and the Alps. This HSR project still carries, in spite of twenty years of continuous updating and reworking, a great deal of unsolved environmental and economic issues. An issue of insuffi- cient cost-benefit balance has recently come to clear evi- dence, especially in view of the non-negligible passenger and freight traffic decrease along the Turin-Lyon direc- tion. The most important aspects dealing with economic costs and claimed benefits, energetic considerations, legal constraints, environmental impact, health impact potential, and the negative experience of other projects, are discussed.