Breakdowns, delays, construction sites and line congestion. All the fragilities of the Italian railway network

Today there was a fault on the line at Verona Porta Nuova. Yesterday a similar problem in Tuscany on the Florence-Rome high-speed route, and then damage from bad weather in Calabria, particularly near Paola, with repercussions on the Milan-Syracuse night trains which accumulated delays of up to 6 hours in both directions. Last Saturday the Milan hub went haywire due to a problem with a pantograph which caused a morning of inconvenience, canceled journeys and delays of up to two hours. On 2 October 2024, an out-of-use power station blocked the Rome hub with repercussions on the entire national network. On that occasion, the MIT investigations spoke of a nail misplaced during work by a small contracting company, which saw its contract suspended. The Italian railway network has been accumulating for months failures, delays and disservices, sparking political controversy and complaints from passengers.

Today the FS group, in light of yet another incident which it defines as “anomalous” on the internet and of a list of “highly suspicious” circumstances he prepared a detailed complaint which he has now filed with the competent authorities. Pay particular attention to the times in which some problems occurred, “it cannot be a coincidence that these are the most complicated ones for railway traffic, with heavy repercussions on the entire network”, it is reported, so much so that the type of failures and their frequency are “raising more than a few questions”. The document, deposited in the Digos offices of the Rome Police Headquarters, will end up being examined by the Capitoline prosecutor’s office.

Among the possible causes of recurring problems, some technicians analyze, there is great congestion on the Italian railway networkon which just under 9 thousand trains circulate per day, of which 377 are high speed. User numbers are constantly increasing: passengers transported on Trenitalia’s high-speed trains went from 6.5 million in 2008 to 45 million last year. Then there are those from Italo, around 25 million in combination with the Itabus service. While the infrastructure network has longer update times. The high-speed network in Italy has cutting-edge features on some routes – between the average age of the convoys and maximum speed on some routes – but it also presents fragilities and important territorial gaps.

The main route is the Naples- -Rome-Florence-Bologna-Milan high-speed route, which has changed the habits of Italians, gradually leading them to prefer rail transport to air transport on those routes due to the convenience and speed of travel. But the hubs of Milan, Rome, Florence and Naples are close to saturation. At the first problem the network goes into trouble. According to FS, the reasons for the delays refer approximately 34% to the reliability of the infrastructure and approximately 25% to the rolling stock. So much so that investigations are underway for a possible rationalization of the offer by RFI to ease the pressure on the most congested large plants.

The network suffers from various fragilities – including parts that are still single track – and the modernization works require significant technical time, with frequent slippages on the timetable. In the South, high speed is struggling. Since mid-2022 all the construction sites planned for the construction of the new Naples-Bari High Speed ​​line have been active, also with Pnrr funds, by 2028 it should be fully operational with the reduction of travel time to around one hour, leading to three hours on Rome-Bari and two hours on the Naples-Bari. Different situation on the new Salerno-Reggio Calabria high speed line, which involves a total investment of over 11 billion, divided into several lots.

The MIT recalls that work is underway on lot 1A, from Battipaglia to Romagnano, costing 2.9 billion. Lots 1B and 1C, from Romagnano to Praia, are worth a total of 8 billion, 7 of which are financed with the complementary plan: the authorization process is still underway, at the end of which the missing resources will have to be found to complete the requirements to allow the start of construction sites. The remaining lots are under design and will be financed from time to time in the RFI program contract. As regards the Third Crossing, on the Genoa-Tortona railway, to speed up connections between Liguria and the Po Valley, the works (the construction sites have been active since 2013) will resume between spring and summer. As regards the excavations interrupted due to the presence of gas, explains the MIT, the solution has been found to operate safely and the interventions will restart on both fronts.