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Luxembourg's Government Council (Cabinet) recently agreed on a route for the Alzingen bypass project.

The Government Council dediced, in accordance with a 2009 law concerning the assessment of the impacts on the human and natural environment of certain road, rail and airport projects, to go with the "North-West" option of the Alzingen bypass project and defined the scope of the compensatory measures to be implemented. 

The project owner is responsible for drawing up a detailed preliminary project which is to be submitted to Luxembourg's Minister of the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development in order to specify the compensatory measures and determine the operating and development conditions.

The Government Council's decision was based on the environmental impact assessment report of June 2021 and additional information from February 2022, as well as the results of the public inquiry organised by the municipality of Hesperange in March 2022.

The objective of the assessment was to minimise the impact on the environment, to group together the road and rail infrastructure corridors as well as possible, to optimise the prospects for the redevelopment of the localities of Howald, Hesperange and Alzingen with a view to a better quality of life for residents, to create additional space for soft mobility and public transport, to respect the functionality of farms as much as possible and to ensure a smooth organisation of traffic flows from the south-east to the centre of the country, in particular to the urban developments to the south-west of the capital (Ban de Gasperich/Midfield/Howald).

The Government Council also noted, in accordance with the provisions of a 2018 amended law concerning the protection of nature and natural resources, that none of the options analysed within the framework of the environmental impact assessment report avoided significant impacts on the Natura 2000 network and that imperative reasons of overriding public interest must be invoked to allow the construction of the project, particularly from a regional perspective, for reasons of public health and safety as well as for economic reasons.

Moreover, the Government Council noted that the text of the Grand-Ducal regulation of 8 September 1994 of the protected zone "Roeserbann" respectively the current delimitations of the zone do not allow the realisation of the Alzingen bypass project. A prerequisite for its realisation is therefore the adaptation of the relevant Grand-Ducal regulation.

The project itself includes a section of 6,032 metres with 22 engineering structures (eight underpasses, four overpasses, seven hydraulic structures and three fauna passages). This is a local bypass with the intermediate connection of the CR159 "Fentange-Berchem" path and includes the installation of modal filters, combined with traffic calming measures in the interest of the localities of Howald, Hesperange and Alzingen. The local bypass project for these localities is thus a major element of the national mobility plan PNM 2035, a plan which constitutes a set of operational and infrastructural measures.

The construction of a covered trench of 250 metres is expected to ensure the ecological continuity of the forest areas located to the north (forest massif called "Fennerholz") and to the south ("Neit Fennerholz" forest massif) of the bypass. As a result, these forest massifs will remain strongly linked to the ecological corridor which will be reactivated with the construction of a wildlife crossing spanning the A3 motorway to the south of the cut-and-cover section. The details of the compensation measures (creation of extensive meadows, renaturation of the Alzette, plantations, etc.) and other necessary measures will be developed in the aforementioned preliminary project.