2023-06-12 18:09:20
Conseil national
Lausanne station: “The evaluation of the additional costs is in progress”
Several elected officials questioned the Federal Council again on the delay in the construction of the Vaud station and its consequences. Bern wants to be reassuring.
Published
Synthesis image of the project presented in 2019. Four years later, the project is still at a standstill.
cff
The construction site of the Lausanne station, with its delays and its controversies, was again invited under the Federal Dome during question time on Monday at the National. Several elected officials, like Isabelle Pasquier-Eichenberger (Greens / GE) and Raphaël Mahaim (Greens / VD) questioned the Minister of Transport Albert Rösti in particular on the additional costs generated by the postponement of more than 4 years of the start of the work and their impact on other infrastructure projects in the Lausanne conurbation.
In its answers delivered in writing, the Federal Council is not very forthcoming: “The evaluation of the additional costs is in progress at the CFF”, he is content to answer. As a reminder, the initial cost of the project was estimated at 1.3 billion francs. And to reassure: it is the Confederation which will assume the most important part. And the additional costs will not affect the federal funding of urban projects provided by the FORTA road fund.
No new investigation
Valérie Piller Carrard (PS / FR) wanted to know, since the expansion project was going to be overhauled in depth, if it would require new inquiries likely to extend the end date of the work planned for 2037. Here too, Albert Rösti’s DETEC is not very talkative: “The SBB are in the process of resuming their project so that it has the sufficient degree of maturity. The planned optimizations remain a priori within the scope of the approved project”, he limits himself to underlining. And to add: “It is possible that marginal parts of the project must be investigated”.
Olivier Feller (PLR / VD) wanted to know if new calls for tenders were going to be launched and if these had been taken into account in the estimated end of the works. Berne replied that the contracts awarded remained valid and that new calls were not planned. “There is no new procedure linked to or triggered by the shift in planning,” assured the government.
Finally Jean-Pierre Grin (UDC / VD) wondered whether the planned commercial surfaces should not be reduced. The Federal Council replied to him by indicating that the reorganization was above all due to shortcomings of a technical nature and that the commercial surfaces posed “no particular problem”. Reducing these surfaces “would probably result in the triggering of new procedures, and therefore new delays on the project”.
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