Italian Railway Network (FS Group) won the tender for the construction of the new Santomarco Gallery on the Cosenza-Paola/San Lucido line, an integral part of the future high speed/high capacity of Salerno-Reggio Calabria.
The tender has a value of approximately 1.6 billion euros and was assigned to the Santomarco Consortium, consisting of webuild, Ghella, Pizzarotti & C enterprise, Seli Overseas. The intervention involves the creation of a new double -track line with AV/AC characteristics of the length of 22 kilometers, of which about 17 in the gallery and the remaining 5 on the surface. The new track will affect the municipalities of Paola, San Lucido, Rende, Montalto Uffugo, San Vincenzo La Costa and San Filo, in the province of Cosenza. Near the entrance of the Cosenza side gallery, in the municipality of Montalto Uffugo, a new station is planned, with the relative connection viability, for the territory and the university center of Rende. Activation is expected in 2032.
Meanwhile, the works on Lot 1a Battipaglia-Romagnano continue, also entirely financed with PNRR funds, while the authorization process of the lots 1b and 1C Romagnano-Buonabitacolo/Buonabitacolo-Praia and the design process of the other lots are underway to complete the Salerno-Reggio Calabria itinerary.
The new AV/AC Salerno-Reggio Calabria line, an integral part of the European railway corridor Ten-T Scandinavia-Mediterranean, represents the continuity of a strategic itinerary for the connection between the north and south of the country. The new connection will allow to increase the levels of accessibility to the AV system for different areas with a high territorial value, such as the Cilento and the Vallo di Diano, the Ionian coast, the high and the lower Cosentino, the area of the port of Gioia Tauro and the Reggio area, as well as guaranteeing speeding up connections to Potenza, Calabria and Sicily and an enhancement of goods transport by iron and for Gioia Tauro. The future connection will contribute to the reduction of territorial gaps both in terms of infrastructure equipment and the development of the reference context, accelerating economic and tourist growth.
The new AV/AC Salerno-Reggio Calabria line is one of the strategic works of the SPARIZI CANTIERI project, an initiative of the FS group (with the companies RFI and Italferr), conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, under the auspices of the extraordinary commissioner of government Lucio Menta.