Morning of Tuesday, July 30. Business trip to Tuscany. The Trenitalia Regional Veloce train 4096 leaves promptly from platform 1 East of Roma Termini at 7:2 minutes. Clean train, air conditioning, lots of free seats. The first stop, after a few minutes, is at Roma Tiburtina. The stop is extended. Something is wrong. Then comes the announcement: the train cannot depart due to the presence of “strangers along the line” which requires the intervention of the police forces.
It’s an announcement that is heard more and more often in stations and on trains. Disturbing. Who are the strangers? And then what are they doing on the tracks? The wait is prolonged. The high-speed trains that left from Termini are also blocked at Tiburtina. They start again after 37 minutes, but it’s not enough. The internal loudspeaker announces that the train is being diverted to the slow line. I arrive in Chiusi 65 minutes late. Luckily, my work commitments are still safe.
The return train is the Regionale Veloce number 4107 leaving Chiusi at 17:06. It is announced as being 5 minutes late. Then the minutes become 11. Then they go down to 6. We wait for the train on platform 5. The train arrives and stops. I get on, but it is announced that from now on the train is cancelled. It stops here. News arrives of a fire along the line that forces the blocking of trains between Rome and Florence. It is 17:11 and the board announces the departure at 17:45 of two replacement buses that will stop in Orvieto and Orte. The passengers move around the station hall, lost. A young train conductor is besieged by passengers looking for news, but he has none and apologizes. In the meantime, word must have spread among the taxi drivers and some white cars arrive. There are Italians and foreigners with planes leaving Fiumicino in the evening. The bargaining with the taxi drivers for the fares begins. I have no idea how much they will pay for a trip of almost 200 kilometers.
Meanwhile, under the still scorching sun of 5:30 p.m., they wait for replacement buses in the square in front of the Chiusi station. A bus arrives and is mobbed. The driver does not open the trunk and those with suitcases, even heavy ones, have to drag them on board. The bus fills up immediately, with people standing (including children) who could not stand. And the second bus? The driver says not to get our hopes up: “There are no other buses available. With the traffic, construction sites and fires, they can’t be found. If it arrives, it will be here in an hour or an hour and a half.” Then it leaves, with the passengers standing.
The first train to Rome would be the Intercity 597 to Salerno. It is a train with a tortuous route. It leaves from Milan, reaches Liguria, goes down the Tyrrhenian coast and then deviates towards Florence and goes down to the south. It should leave Chiusi at 18:56, but it is accumulating delays. In Florence it is already 59 minutes late. But will it arrive? Will they stop it?
Unsure of what to do, I hear a regional train coming from Florence. I get on the platform wondering if the train will be heading towards Rome. Instead, it unloads its passengers at Chiusi and stops. But on the next platform I see a Frecciarossa train that shouldn’t be stopping at Chiusi. It’s the Freccia 9539 that travels from Milan to Naples. It left from Milano Centrale at 1:10 PM. It’s now 7 PM and the train should have already been in Naples. The doors are open. The young train conductor says they’re waiting for authorization. He talks about a signature that someone has to put who knows where. While he’s talking, a message arrives and says: “Maybe it’s better if you start getting on.” I get on and after 5 minutes, in fact, we leave at a walking pace. The train is quite full, but among the passengers there is more resignation than anger. The train advances in fits and starts, on the slow line. A member of the on-board staff reassures: “We’ll be in Rome at 9 PM.” Meanwhile, news agencies and newspaper websites say that the fire has been put out and that rail traffic has resumed. Evidently there is a traffic jam of trains to clear. But that’s not enough. In Orvieto the train stops for technical checks. Here, the nightmare of a train breakdown on an already busy day. Luckily the air conditioning works, at least. The stop in Orvieto lasts almost half an hour, then it starts again. The train arrives at Termini after 10pm with a record delay of 5 hours and 18 minutes. I hope that at least there were no hitches for those who continued on to Naples. I look at the delay boards: 310 minutes, 160, 140, 110, 70 (lucky ones!), 100, 110, 110…
A bad day? Certainly. An isolated case? Unfortunately not. The disruptions on Italian railway lines are continuous. And they have been particularly frequent in recent days. Especially on the Rome-Florence line and the Naples-Rome line. The causes? Technical faults on the trains, faults in the circulation systems, strangers along the line, lightning, fires. But there are also structural problems, as reported, with data in hand, by Milena Gabanelli on the Corriere della Sera with Dataroom last January: increased traffic volumes, too many failures, lack of maintenance, an obsolete technological apparatus.
Today, July 31, the High Speed seems to be working well for now. However, there are slowdowns between Bari and Pescara due to a “line fault”. “High Speed, Intercity and Regional trains may record an increase in travel time of up to 40 minutes”, we read on the Viaggia Treno portal. Also today, between Genoa and La Spezia Intercity and Regional trains recorded increased travel times of up to 65 minutes due to a blockage at a level crossing, which was later removed.
“With the Minister of Transport totally unaware, the Traveler Olympics are taking place in Italy. We are waiting for him for the awards ceremony,” he wrote on X on July 29 Pierluigi Bersani showing a photo of the Termini Station board with train delays (up to 100 minutes for a Frecciarossa Rome-Naples). Matthew SalviniMinister of Infrastructure, on July 24th at question time in the Chamber, after other black days for transport, he had declared: “With respect to the railway disruptions reported in the last few hours that have seen workers and tourists stuck on trains and in stations, we promptly asked for clarifications from the technicians to understand the reasons for the disruptions, because it is true that we are at the maximum number of construction sites open between Pnrr, ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of the works, but the situation in which the passengers have traveled in these hours is not acceptable”. Even yesterday, in the hours of chaos, a word from the minister responsible for transport would have been appreciated. Perhaps of solidarity with travellers in the midst of the disruptions. Instead, on X he lashed out against a “trans Algerian boxer”, he dedicated thoughts and prayers to the little girls stabbed near Liverpool, he celebrated the Olympic gold in fencing. The only post on the topics within his competence: the inspection of a bridge in Sardinia.
Meanwhile, Wednesday, July 31, here is the news that confirms the emergency situation of the Italian railway network. Trenitalia announces changes to circulation and delays on several lines “for infrastructure improvement works that will be preparatory to a greater frequency and better quality of service”. For those traveling by train, hellish weeks are expected.
