Revisiting Mussolini's railways With ex-fascists back in government, the Italian railroad system looks like it is getting back on track, writes Philip Willan Wednesday January 16, 2002 Philip Willan
One of the pleasanter things for which Benito Mussolini is remembered is having made Italian trains run on time.
With ex-fascists back in the government and a prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who has promised to kick-start the economy through massive public investment projects, the prospects for the Italian railway system ought to be rosy.
Italy has begun a cautious privatisation programme, dividing the activities of the state railway company into its component parts: the trains, Trenitalia, the network, Rete Ferroviaria Italiana, and two companies which will operate the large and medium-sized stations respectively.
Already there are signs of progress, as improvements turn the major stations from desolate crime blackspots into bustling shopping malls. The liberalisation process is likely to be slow - Italians are determined to avoid the pitfalls of Britain's Thatcherite railway privatisation and experts say the state will never renounce its control over the track network.
Despite difficulties in throwing off a reputation for unreliability, Italy's railway service is, in reality, on much the same level as its major European competitors. High-speed ETR trains are capable of travelling at up to 300km an hour and railway officials say 92% of the prestigious Eurostar trains arrive on time or less than 15 minutes late. If a Eurostar train is delayed by more than 25 minutes passengers are entitled to a partial refund.
Local and regional trains are another story, slow, unreliable and uncomfortable, passengers consider it a major event if they arrive on time.
"We are the safest railway service in Europe," said Gianni Farneti, a spokesman for the service. "In Britain they have had so many accidents recently that they have stopped reporting the data to the International Railway union."
Mr Farneti said Italy was close to the European average in terms of punctuality. "The Swiss trains are more punctual, but they have a much smaller network," he said. And it's not true that the trains ran on time under Mussolini: "It's just that no one dared to report it when they were late."
The expectations of the travelling public have grown enormously, Mr Farneti said. "The invention of the mobile phone has been a disaster for us. As soon as there is a problem the passengers are on the phone to ANSA [the national news agency] or Reuters to complain."
Italians are a nation of car-lovers with a highly developed national autostrada network, but Mr Farneti believes there has been a change in mentality and there is a greater appreciation of the ecological, economic and human advantages of the train.
"This year we are investing 8 trillion lire (£2.6bn) in the railways. We are the company that is investing most in the entire country," he said.
Edoardo Zanchini, a railways expert with the environmental organisation Legambiente, is less optimistic. The Berlusconi government has promised to invest heavily in the autostrada network, devoting 50% of infrastructure investments to that and just 37% to the railways, he said.
And investment priorities were skewed towards high-speed links in the centre and north, with inadequate resources reserved for the less profitable regional networks. "Italy has the worst level of efficiency in Europe in its local and metropolitan network," he said. "The delays are appalling and there is no incentive to take the train - it's almost on the same level as the English railways."
For all the improvements in efficiency, the railways have suffered a number of public relations disasters. Last summer there were around eight incidents where high-speed Eurostars broke down, sometimes in tunnels, trapping passengers in airless metal ovens - the batteries for the air conditioning have an autonomy of just half an hour.
And the railways linked their image to chaos and confusion in the first days of the euro changeover. Having provided travel agencies with software that couldn't cope with the new currency, thousands of angry passengers had to spend hours queuing at stations to buy their tickets.
Although unable to compete with air travel over longer distances, the railways are likely to play an increasingly important role in the transport infrastructure of the country. The long narrow boot shape of Italy lends itself to high-speed train links and car-owners are becoming increasingly sensitive to the advantages of the train as an alternative to congested roads.
"The future definitely belongs to the train, and not only in Italy," said Mr Farneti. "It's safer, more environment-friendly and reduces external costs. If you think of the 9,000 people who die on the roads every year and the eight people who were killed in train accidents in the year 2000 it's clear that the difference is enormous."
Email philip.willan at libero.it