BARCELONA, Feb 15 — One of the most long-awaited transport links in Europe, a planned fast train line between Lyon in France and Turin in Italy, has suffered another delay this week after the European Union’s anti-fraud office announced it is investigating allegations of corruption-related over-spending.

The TAV (Treno Alta Velocita — Italian for high speed train) project has been in the planning for more than two decades, and protests over the potential environmental damage have been raging for just as long over a process which is estimated to reach a staggering final cost of €26 billion RM106 billion).

The controversy stems from the fact that the proposed line entails cutting a 57-kilometre tunnel — one of the longest in the world — through the heart of the Alpine mountain chain which separates the cities and necessitates the building of the line in the first place.

The logic behind the project is easy to understand: land links between the third biggest city in France and the fourth-largest in Italy (and the country’s industrial heartland) are currently minimal, and the tunnel would also allow easier connections farther afield. Direct rail journey time between Paris and Milan, for example, would be reduced from seven hours to four, bringing obvious benefits in trade and industry between two of the continent’s major cities.

The reasons for such fierce opposition are equally evident: the Alps are Europe’s greatest geographical feature, and making such a vast incision at such vast expense to link two cities which are already connected by air travel is bound to provoke ire.

I believe, however, it is vital for Europe’s ongoing peace and prosperity that transport links of this nature continue to be built.

Ease of travel has always played a crucially important part in human life. Without the possibility of getting from A to B, nothing can happen: the exchange of people, ideas, customs, natural produce and manufactured goods — all the things which serve to encourage the development of the species — can only take place when transport links allow it.

Looking back through history, it’s clear to see how transport has always played a key role in the human story, with the importance of navigating the River Nile in the development of Ancient Egypt, more than three thousand years ago, one of the most striking early examples.

Later on, arguably the greatest strength of the Roman Empire was its expertise in road-building. Many Roman highways are still in use in England, and one of the main streets leading out of my current home town Barcelona is still called “Via Augusta” in honour of the emperor who ordered its construction as part of a staggering 1,500 kilometre-highway linking the Iberian peninsula to the capital of the empire: “all roads lead to Rome”, as they say.

And more recently, the importance of travel was also recognised by Adolf Hitler, who oversaw the construction of a comprehensive and unique “Autobahn” motorway system across Germany before becoming side-tracked by the Second World War and his deranged attempt to eradicate the Jewish race: the motorways are still in use today, helping to convert post-war Germany into one of the most developed and connected nations in the world.

Despite their indisputable importance, the construction of new transport links has always provoked controversy and opposition, often on environment grounds.

My old home town of Newbury in England, for example, gained a small degree of notoriety in the mid-1990s thanks to the briefly famous “Newbury bypass”: at that time, it was possible to travel directly from Scotland to Spain via highways of at least two lanes with the exception of a short three-mile stretch where traffic was forced down a single-lane bottleneck: Newbury.

A Eurostar train comes out of the Channel Tunnel, owned by EuroTunnel, on April 10, 2014 in Coquelles, northern France. — Picture by AFP

Plans were drawn up to rectify the situation by building a new dual carriageway to the west of the town — bypassing the centre — and drastically reducing journey time. The environmentalists were aghast with one protester, the mockingly nicknamed “Swampy”, even setting up a permanent camp in a part of the forest which was earmarked for destruction. Needless to say, Swampy was eventually evicted and the road constructed.

At roughly the same time and on a bigger scale, there was similar resentment of the Channel Tunnel project, linking the south-east of England with the north of France by building a 50-kilometre rail tunnel under the sea: some dramatists even claimed the tunnel would bring the end of the world as we know it by signalling the death of the United Kingdom’s island status.

The Channel Tunnel eventually opened in 1994 and, although its operation has not been perfect, on the whole it has been a success, last year carrying 21 million passengers and 20 million tonnes of freight – record numbers in both categories.

None of this means, of course, that all financial and environmental concerns should be simply swept aside in a mad frenzy of road and rail building. The pros and cons for each proposed project have to be carefully balanced out.

But the importance of transport networks is often, I feel, under-appreciated. And not just for practical and commercial purposes of trade and commerce.

At times like these, with the Muslim/Christian/secularist divide posing the greatest threat to Europe’s security since the Cold War, good transport links also keep people moving, mingling and interacting, opening new lines of communication and encouraging open-mindedness rather than closed and negative hostility.

At the moment, that is just what we need.

* This is the personal opinion of the writers or organisation and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.