Client: TELT (Tunnel Euralpin Lyon Turin), via concept partner Demos Helsinki
Location: France–Italy Alpine corridor (Lyon to Turin)
Year: 2020
Sector: Cartography · Rail Infrastructure · Multimodal Networks
Three nested maps positioning the new Lyon-Turin rail tunnel within Europe’s wider cycling, hiking, and rail networks — making the case for a “smart,” multimodal Alpine crossing rather than just a tunnel.
TELT needed to explain a 57km binational rail tunnel not as an isolated infrastructure project, but as part of a much larger connected network — European rail corridors, long-distance cycling routes, and Alpine hiking trails all converging on the same crossing.
Commissioned by TELT, the France-Italy public company delivering the Lyon-Turin railway, with Finnish think tank Demos Helsinki as concept intermediary and SPIN Unit producing the cartography. This 2020 mapping work later became the visual foundation of TELT’s 2023 public “SMARTLAND” storymap.
Built entirely from open European geodata — Eurostat administrative boundaries, EEA hydrography, EuroVelo cycling routes, and TEN-T rail corridor data — at three nested scales: a pan-European overview, a France-Italy regional map, and a detailed local map of the Susa/Maurienne valleys around the Mont Cenis base tunnel itself.
Delivered as a set of finished cartographic maps in November 2020, produced in QGIS.
- Deliberately layers four infrastructure networks together — TEN-T rail, EuroVelo cycling, national/regional railways, and European long-distance trails — to argue the tunnel’s value within a broader sustainable, multimodal Alpine-crossing narrative rather than as a standalone rail project.
- The local-scale map traces the Mont Cenis base tunnel alignment through Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Modane, Bardonecchia, and Susa to Turin — replacing the historic 1871 Fréjus tunnel.
- Built on entirely open, public data — no proprietary TELT data was needed to make the case visually.
- The mapping had genuine staying power: reused unchanged as the core cartography of TELT’s 2023 public storymap, three years after this original engagement.
Gave TELT a clear, reusable visual argument for the tunnel’s place in Europe’s broader transport network — one that continued to serve the client’s public communications years after delivery.