Rapid transit Ceva boosts Geneva’
The Ceva project to construct a new cross-city and cross-border rail link to France is set to change the face of Geneva when it opens in 2017. Project director Antoine Da Trindade talks to Anitra Green about the challenges and wider implications of the project.
T
HE much-needed Cornavin- Eaux-Vives-Annemasse (Ceva) project to improve mobility in
Geneva and provide a cross-border connection to France was first conceived as long ago as 1850. However, numerous false starts and political disagreements meant the project was ditched and not revived until the 1990s.
Further disputes followed, the final
one from local residents angry at the impact of construction on homes in the area. After the Federal Office of Transport approved plans in May 2008 for the new 16km line, residents took their objections to court. The case eventually made it all the way to the Swiss Federal Administrative Court which rejected a last ditch plea meaning that 161 years after Ceva was initially conceived, construction crews were free to finally start work.
Anyone seeing the enormous amount 28
of building work going on at Carouge- Bachet or Eaux-Vives will immediately appreciate the scale and complexity of the project, which is due to be finished in 2017.
The new 16km line, 14km of which is on Swiss soil and 2km in France, will enable passengers to cross Geneva in 20 minutes from the main station at Cornavin to Annemasse via Lancy-Pont Rouge, Carouge-Bachet, Champel- Hospital, Eaux-Vives and Chêne-Bourg. It will also form the core element of a Swiss-French railway network extending over 230km with 40 stations, 20 in Switzerland and 20 in France. Ceva is a joint venture between Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) and the Geneva canton. The overall cost of the project of the Swiss section is SFr 1.5bn ($US 1.61bn) of which 56% is from the Swiss government and 44% from the canton of Geneva. The 2km French section is estimated to cost É234m, which
includes modifications to the stations at Annemasse and Thonon-Evian. Mr Antoine Da Trindade, who has been director of the Ceva project for the last seven years, says the new line is being built as a turnkey project, with Ceva responsible for issuing tenders. “We have finished all the preliminary work with only a few exceptions like contracting the construction of the station at Lancy-Pont Rouge,” he says. The project involves rebuilding and track doubling the existing single-track line between Cornavin and Lancy-Pont Rouge and from Eaux-Vives to Annemasse, with most of the latter section underground. At the same time the missing link between the two systems is being constructed between Lancy-Pont Rouge and Eaux-Vives, which was previously the terminus of the French line from Annemasse. The bridge on the existing line between Cornavin and Lancy-Pont
IRJ May 2013
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