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Whereas the ecologists continue to mobilize themselves against putting into circulation of the road tunnel of Somport, the regional consulting with registered voter with the contract of plan the repair of the connection shoed between the Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Aragon, in Spain

TOULOUSE of our correspondent

They were still nearly four thousand demonstrators, Sunday May 7, side French, counters the tunnel of Somport; a new mobilization is envisaged, May 21, but Spanish side. In valley d'Aspe, the passion controversy which oppose since fifteen years in favour and detractors of the project are on the way to be however completed by «a null match ». Putting into circulation of the new road tunnel on N 134, highly disputed by the ecologists, is unceasingly pushed back. And the old railway tunnel, built at the beginning of the century with the Franco-Spanish border, could take again service.
Indeed, since April 19, the reopening of the Pau-Canfranc line appears very officially in the contract of plan signed between the State and the Aquitaine area. A first envelope of 340 million francs (51,5 million euros) is registered to allow the trains circulating again on the 58 kilometers of the way between the small town of Oloron-Sainte-Marie (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) and the immense international station lost in the tourist station of Canfranc (Aragon).
Thirty years after the closing of the international railway inaugurated in 1928, this announced rebirth has value of symbol.
When a goods train was crushed accidentally against a bridge, March 27, 1970, nobody really protested against the decision of the SNCF to close a line considered as obsolete, which was being gone from there to die in a village lost at the fine bottom of pro-Franco Spain. One will have needed the project of boring of a road tunnel facilitating the exchanges with a country from now on integrated in the European Union so that the rusted rails of the way given up with insane grasses are again taken into account.
Founded in 1986, the Committee for the reopening of the line Oloron-Canfranc (Creloc) however preached a long time in the desert.
Even most radical of the militants ecologists, like Eric Pététin, preferred to fight against the road tunnel rather than for the return of the train.
For the tape of«Aspaches »cut off in the old station from Cette-Eygun, the prospect to see spending all the day of the convoys of goods was hardly more amusing than the vision of the trucks on the national road which crosses the valley.
The rail however went up the slope, at to be voted by plebiscite the today point. A survey published by South-west, in June 1999, revealed that 73 % of Aquitanian were declared favorable to the reopening of the line. A few weeks earlier, the tragedy accident in the tunnel of Mont Blanc had shown with the eyes of all the risks caused by circulation of weight-heavy in mountain.
Whereas the railway achieves from now on the political unanimity, of president (UDF) of the general consulting of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, François Bayrou, to the president (PS) of the regional consulting of Aquitaine, Alain Rousset, the SNCF and shoed Network of France (RFF), the establishment charged to manage the national railway infrastructures, paradoxically seem the last obstacles with the return of the trains in valley of Winder.
The president of Creloc, Alain Cazenave, denounces «the anti-Canfranc culture of the SNCF». The technicians of the rail fear the strong slopes and the old helicoid tunnel of the line, which they consider unsuited to the modern rail-bound transport. «The opening of Pau-Canfranc was a long adventure, its reopening is also», warns Mr. Rousset.

INTERMEDIATE SCENARIO

The question which arises today for the railroad in valley of Winder is the same one which was posed yesterday for the road: simple tourist route and of service road intervalléenne, or corridor of international freight for the goods? A report/ratio controlled by the regional consulting of Aquitaine studied the two assumptions, declined in three scenarios.
The most ambitious assumption envisages to continue the line to Saragossa with a new electrified way with international spacing which could see passing twelve passenger trains and thirty convoys of goods; this one represents a total cost of 2,4 billion francs, including 580 million (88,4 million euros) for the French part. It was also planned to reopen only one small part of the line, until Bedous, before the hardest rise towards the border, for only 13 million francs (1,98 million euros).
It is the price of bucolic a tourist train which would visit the valley d'Aspe with 30 kilometer per hour, and whose management could have been conceded with a private company.
The 340 million francs entered with the contract of plan correspond to the intermediate scenario of a mixed line - six passenger trains and eight daily trains of freight - until Canfranc with Diesel locos. With the area, one ensures that it is not absolutely necessary of one first section intended to involve the essential financial participations of Spain and Europe, but one avoids forecasting the date of passage of the first train on the line. «I am optimistic, but I will believe in it really only when I see the first train penetrating in the tunnel of Forges-d'Abel », moderates the president of Creloc.

Stéphane Thépot the World of May 11 00