Transport and Infrastructure Minister Danilo Toninelli said Friday that he and his 5-Star Movement (M5S) remain "profoundly" opposed to the controversial TAV Turin-Lyon high-speed link. The M5S have long been against the project on environmental and cost grounds. Their calls for the project to be ditched have increased after a new analysis commissioned by the transport ministry said the rail link would have a negative cost-benefit balance of seven to eight billion euros. However, the M5S's government coalition partners in the League want the project to go ahead. Deputy Premier, Interior Minister and League leader Matteo Salvini has said the project could be revised to cut costs but should not be abandoned completely.
"The TAV could be useful after 2070 but I'm the infrastructure minister and I would feel responsible if another bridge collapsed and people died tomorrow and I could have used the money from the TAV to do maintenance on that piece of infrastructure," Toninelli said. The new cost-benefit analysis has come under fire from some quarters for alleged bias and so the team of experts that compiled it was asked to do a supplementary analysis.
Toninelli said Friday that the supplementary analysis had given the thumbs down to the project too, with a negative cost-benefit balance of 2.5 billion euros in the "realistic scenario".
The opposition centre-left PD, meanwhile, said Friday that it would present a motion of no confidence on Toninelli for allegedly blocking progress on public work projects all over Italy.
The premier's office, meanwhile, denied reports that Conte was warming to the idea of having a scaled down 'mini-TAV' version of the rail link to bring down costs.
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