The Toulon Tunnel is certainly one of the largest construction projects of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in our Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur region. The public utility declaration was given in 1991.
Five years later in 1996, a collapse at Puits Marchand considerably delayed the work schedule.
The north tunnel, crossing Toulon from east to west, was only put into service in 2002. The south tunnel completes this project. It was opened to traffic on Sunday, March 16, 2014. It allows crossing Toulon in the west-east direction.
Thus, the A50 motorway coming from Marseille and the A57 coming from the east of Var and Nice no longer pour into Toulon. Transit vehicles will use this tunnel, thereby easing traffic in the Toulon area.
The Boulevard Strasbourg and Avenue de la République will experience a bit more calm, serenity, and notably less pollution. The experience from the first tunnel and the 1996 collapse allowed the designers to learn beneficial lessons.
The nature of the subsoil required monitoring the buildings (360 structures) and reinforcing their foundations with compensation injections. The ventilation systems, with both tunnels measuring over 3 kilometers, and security measures with inter-tube branches adhere to the latest standards. The Toulon Tunnel is the first urban tunnel to benefit from the new ‘Mont Blanc’ standards.
This monumental project required the removal of nearly a million cubic meters of excavated material, the use of almost one hundred thousand cubic meters of concrete, 260 kilometers of electrical cables, and fifty thousand tons of steel. It is at this cost that Toulon has, hopefully, solved its automobile traffic problems.
This tunnel should serve as an example for other coastal cities, keen on solving traffic issues. We can only applaud this achievement.
Thierry Jan
