Christian Fraser, Italy's 10-Metre Alpine Mega-Tunnel. BBC, Feb 7, 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21450740
("Of greater interest to British tourists - skiers like me - is that the journey time from London to Milan will be cut to just six hours" via high-speed trains, following construction of the Lyon-Turin segment)
My comment:
(a) An companion video clip (02:44 in length):
Christian Fraser,An Inside Look at Work on New Alps Tunnel. BBC, Feb 7, 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21363705
(b) The video but not the English report mentions "TAV," which stands for
The ancient spellings of the city Lyon are
(i) Lugdunum in Latin, and
(ii) Lug[o]dunon (and a couple of variants) in Celtic. For the latter, see Lugus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugus
(section 3 3 Toponyms and ethnonyms)
"People have tried to cross this valley in all kinds of ways - one of the first was Hannibal, the great warrior-leader of Carthage whose own transalpine adventure ended in Susa in 218BC.
"Hannibal's journey across the mountains, with 20,000 soldiers and 37 fighting elephants, took him just 16 days. No-one stood in his way
* Hannibal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal
(247 – 183/182 BC; section 2.1 Overland journey to Italy: "His exact route over the Alps has been the source of scholarly dispute ever since. (Polybius, the surviving ancient account closest in time to Hannibal's campaign, reports that the route was already debated.)")