A Century-Old Railway to 3 Italian Ski Resorts Faces Permanent Dismantlement, Skiers are Fighting to Save It

For nearly a century, a small mountain railway connected the city of Aosta, in Italy’s northwestern Aosta Valley, to the village of Pré-Saint-Didier — the gateway to some of the Alps’ most storied ski terrain. Built in 1929, the line once offered a direct, scenic link toward Courmayeur-Mont-Blanc, La Thuile-La Rosière, and Pila, three of the region’s best-known ski areas. Today, after more than a decade sitting idle, the railway isn’t just closed — it’s on the verge of being torn up for good.

That prospect has struck a nerve with a group of passionate skiers, who are fighting to keep the train line going. The snow sports fans have started a Facebook group and a Change.org petition in a bid to get local government to reconsider. Paola Calvetti, who moved from Milan to a small village in the Aosta Valley in 2013 for the mountains and the snow, believes the dismantling of the train line is a huge loss to the area. “The Aosta Valley borders France and Switzerland, regions where vintage mountain trains are highly valued and widely used — notable examples include the Mont-Blanc Express in Chamonix and the Saint-Bernard-Express in Verbier,” Calvetti wrote to SnowBrains. “We have a railway line here, built in 1929, running between the regional capital, Aosta, and Pré-Saint-Didier. If renovated, it could provide access — via connecting shuttles — to three renowned ski areas.” However, local government is planning to replace the train line with articulated buses.

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The Aosta-Pré-Saint-Didier line has been suspended since December 24, 2015, when regional transport authorities cited low ridership and the cost of essential track and infrastructure maintenance — estimated at roughly €15 million ($17.5 million) — as unsustainable given the broader rail network’s needs. The suspension was originally framed as temporary. It has now stretched to nearly 11 years, according to Italian newspaper La Stampa.

Complicating matters, a regional law passed in 2016 — born from a public petition that found wide support in the Aosta Valley’s regional council — still legally mandates the line’s reopening. Following that law’s passage, Italy’s national rail infrastructure manager, RFI, had allocated €72 million ($83.8 million) toward restoring service, and the route remains written into Italy’s active service contract with Trenitalia for Aosta-Turin rail travel.

None of that has stopped the regional government from moving in the opposite direction.

On July 30, 2026, the Aosta Valley’s regional council approved a sweeping new Regional Transport Plan — its first comprehensive update in nearly 30 years. Buried within it: a proposal to fully decommission the Aosta-Pré-Saint-Didier line and replace it with a “metrobus,” or bus rapid transit corridor.

Under the plan, the tracks between Aosta and Villeneuve would be torn out and paved over for a dedicated bus route, which would then continue to Courmayeur along the existing state highway. From Villeneuve to Pré-Saint-Didier, the old rail bed would instead become a cycling and pedestrian path — one that would need to pass through the line’s numerous existing tunnels. In Aosta itself, the plan calls for cutting the line near the city’s train station entirely, creating a public square intended to improve the connection between the city center and its southern district, including the cable car to Pila and a nearby industrial zone. For the Upper Valley, regional planners envision large buses linking Aosta directly to Courmayeur and the Mont Blanc Skyway cable car.

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Regional officials have defended the shift to buses on practical grounds, projecting 14,000 to 16,000 daily trips along the corridor — mostly short and medium-distance journeys the plan argues are better served by a bus system’s flexibility than by fixed rail.

Not everyone agrees, and the pushback has been pointed. The Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra (Green and Left Alliance) was the only political party to vote against the transport plan, calling the railway’s dismantlement “a historic error” and demanding a regional referendum so that Aosta Valley residents — not just the regional council — get the final say. The party has pointed to two prior regional referendums, held in 1992 over an Olympic bid and in 2012 over a waste incinerator, as precedent for putting a decision of this scale directly to voters. Several other parties in the council abstained rather than voting in favor.

The regional political movement Valle d’Aosta Futura went further, calling the plan “radical, irreversible, and senseless” in a public statement, while the consumer advocacy group Federconsumatori VdA has raised formal legal questions about whether dismantling more than 31 kilometers (19 miles) of public rail infrastructure conflicts with existing regional law, and has called on the regional government to publicly clarify its reasoning before proceeding. Critics have also framed the plan in blunt, big-picture terms: by AVS’s own accounting, the broader transport plan adds 35 kilometers (22 miles) of new roads and highways to the region while eliminating 32 kilometers (20 miles)  of railway — a ratio opponents argue reveals the plan’s true priorities.

Facing what supporters see as an uphill legal and political battle, the campaign to save the line has turned to public pressure. The Aosta-Pré-Saint-Didier railway is currently a nominee in the Fondo Ambiente Italiano’s (FAI) “Luoghi del Cuore” (“Places of the Heart”) competition, a national public vote highlighting Italian heritage sites deserving of preservation and funding — the line currently sits in 5th place nationally.

A companion Change.org petition makes the case in starker terms, arguing that replacing the railway with an asphalt bus corridor would increase vehicle traffic and air pollution in a region “known for its invaluable natural heritage,” and pointing to other regions where historic rail lines have been successfully restored and turned into both functioning transit corridors and tourist draws. The petition also raises concerns about the track record of regional infrastructure management in the Aosta Valley more broadly, arguing that dismantling the line risks generating waste and disruption without solving the valley’s underlying mobility needs.

For Calvetti and others behind the campaign, the stakes go beyond nostalgia. A restored rail connection, they argue, could offer skiers and snowboarders an eco-friendly, low-traffic way to reach three major resorts — much as similar mountain railways already do just across the border in France and Switzerland. “Many of us are saddened that a line with such potential as an eco-friendly tourist attraction is being eliminated,” Calvetti wrote.

Those interested in supporting the campaign can vote for the Aosta-Pré-Saint-Didier railway in FAI’s “Luoghi del Cuore” competition, or sign the accompanying Change.org petition calling on the Aosta Valley’s regional council to reconsider its transport plan.