ABSTRACT
The new high speed/capacity Milan to Genoa rail line will improve railway connections between the Liguria port system with the main railway lines of Northern Italy and the rest of Europe. The project is part of the Rhine-Alpine Corridor, which is one of the corridors of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T core network) connecting Europe’s most populated and important industrial regions. The Rhine-Alpine Corridor constitutes one of the busiest freight routes of Europe, connecting the North Sea ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp to the Mediterranean basin in Genoa, via Switzerland and some of the major economic centres in the Rhein-Ruhr, the Rhein-Main-Neckar, regions and the urban agglomeration in Milan, Northern Italy. The new high speed/capacity rail line will be 53 km long, of which 39 km in tunnels. The new line will be connected to the existing line through four interconnections, 14 km long. The construction started in April 2012 and the completion of the six sections is scheduled for April 2021. The adopted excavation methods are conventional (ADECO RS) and mechanized. The paper will describe this complex project from a design point of view for both excavation methods, conventional and mechanized.
