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    The Country of High Speed Rail Innovation | Italy High Speed Rail



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    A special thanks for Marco Chitti (https://twitter.com/ChittiMarco) for sharing his wisdom on Italy’s railways for this video!

    Italy might’ve been the first country to ever build a dedicated high speed rail line, and the country has led high speed rail innovation again and again. In today’s video we look at its excellent high speed rail system and what we can learn from it.

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    Ever wondered why your city’s transit just doesn’t seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!

    Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.

    50 Comments

    1. davide piva on

      The fact that tilting train increase passengers' comfort is questionable. Back in 1996 I rode a tilting Pendolino between Milan and Florence and to be honest motion sickness hit pretty hard. I really wanted to get off the train asap.

    6. alessandro acquistapace on

      are we talking about the same Italy? As an Italian, of course I really enjoy that we have such a great system that connects our biggest cities, but I also really really really really don't like how all the investment seems to revolve around those big lines. there's still no decent service to Genoa from the south (my mother used to have to work there one day a week and she would use the plane to go and come back the same day because it simply wasn't as quick by train), Sicily and Sardinia both have horrendous and outdated train systems and the connection between the eastern parts of the country and the western parts south of the Bologna-Florence line might as well not exist, and that's before we dig into the gigantic failure of the new tunnel for HSR between Italy and France – and the corridor to Reggio Calabria promises to be just as environmentally controversial and long to build. There's obviously lot to like, but I think that there are also major failures which would need to be addressed to make Italy a model for high speed rail in the world. Right now we only have one really good corridor.

    8. Visionary Circle on

      Unfortunately there was never a service Milan – Naples under 4 hours. The fastest i have seen was 4h15min, but it has increased to 4h30min in recent years. Maybe you meant the Milan – Roma service which is under 3h, and shows that it would actually be possible to run a service up to Naples under 4h. I would really appreciate faster service on this route, as it would be easy to implement a service which only stops in Roma Tiburtina and could save up to 30min in travel time by avoiding a up to 20min turnaround in Roma Termini. Also a direct Frecciarossa from Switzerland would be great. Swiss Railway Services just reach out to the northern cities at the moment. A coming back of international night trains would be appreciated as well, in order to not lose a whole day of travel each way for longer trips.

    9. Ram Ananthraman on

      Found Italian trains lot more luxurious than the Swiss and Spanish.. Europe must stay as is to prove the world peace and prosperity can be achieved with mutual respect and dignity without any guns and bullying

    10. Arilander on

      A little update on the Napoli Bari HSR as I live near the area of the upcoming infrastructure. They are going to start digging a 27 km long gallery in the heart of Appennini which will be the core of this infrastructure. Once fully operative, the galleria Hirpinia will be an impressive tunnel which will equal in length the Galleria di Valico, another tunnel they are boring between Genova and Milano. The Napoli – Bari HSR will allow to travel between the two cities in 2 hours instead of the actual 4 and between Bari and Rome in just 3 hours, storming through my country’s backbone and serving also Benevento, my beautiful city.

    13. ylILin on

      RMT worked on this video for weeks just to throw shade at Ferrari F1 Team.
      He didn't do it for the trains.
      He did it for the shade.

    17. MAURO 464 on

      VERY WELL DONE VIDEO I’M HAPPY TO SEE THAT OUR HIGH SPEED NETWORK IS APPRECIATED ALSO OVERSEA. IT WOULD BE VERY VERY INTERESTING A VIDEO ON A SPCIFIC TOPIC SUCH AS ARCHITECTURE ON STATION OR THE PROJECT MENTIONED AT 13:00 . GREETINGS FROM AN ITALIAN TRAIN ENTHUSIAST👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

    20. jorehir on

      I have 2 complaints about Italian fast trains:
      – Seats placed in front of one another… Unless you happen to have a nice looking lady in front of you, it's a big NO! It's uncomfortable to share the same table with other people, not being able to stretch your legs, or being stared at while sleeping.
      – Interior lights are kept high all the time. When it's dark outside, windows become mirrors, and it feels like being inside of a cold spaceship. They should introduce nicer ambient lights like on modern airplanes.

    23. Eugene Risi on

      I live in verona, and I find the railway infrastructure here to be fascinating. Verona is one of those cities that really goes many places by rail. You can head to milan, venice, bologna and even austria if you choose to

    24. Daniel Christen on

      Was just curious; is the Zurich to Milan route via Gotthard Base Tunnel full high-speed rail now or plans to be full high-speed rail at some point? I would imagine this is a critical cross Alps route (was not shown in the network map) along with the current construction of the Lyon to Turin high-speed route and Munich/Innsbruck to Verona route via Brenner Base Tunnel. Another awesome video by the way too!

    27. #SuperFinnee on

      I think you missed a route between Venice and Udine, where the freccia rossa trains service but don’t go for high speeds. There are freccia rossa trains and also Italo trains that service Udine which is where they terminate from Rome/Naples and also Milan from memory. These services leave only once a day I believe and I’m guessing there are more trains between Venice, Milan and Rome etc. but it was an amazing video explaining all the different types of trains in Italy!

    28. /CRAB on

      I would be very glad if you do the explainer on Newcastle metro. It’s relatively small compared to the systems you are usually talking about, but the area itself is not that big. However, Tyne and Wear metro is a cool metro system, that connects the whole agglomeration and have a lot of interesting decisions like pretzel shape services. And despite having just 2 lines, it has 60 stations, more than a half of the Oslo despite not being a capital and even a well known city across the world

    30. dodo_nothebird on

      I'm so upset. I lived in the UK(country that I love and consider my home) for the past 10 years and travelling by train here is just so expensive and inefficient. I never understood why.

    31. Valeriano Cuomo on

      From north to South Italy there are 1100km of Appenninis mountains,at north,800 km of Alpis mountains,the most high in Europe. Rest of the western Europe,is a table from ping pong.the costs and the times,in italy, they are very very most high: 1 km of gallery cost also 4/500% in most .2years in france ,6years in italy, the time of bulding .first of speaking, use the mind

    33. Valeriano Cuomo on

      Is normal. The italians they are the top in the engineering of the infrastructures. High speed rails and high ways they are all underground : gallerys, bridges gallerys bridges gallerys bridges….Europe has a territory simil at table for ping pong: law cost ,level difficult: 0

    34. Joel Vuadens-Chan on

      Although the Swiss national railway company has ETR 610 trains driving to Itsly (in their own white/red/black) colours, the train shown at 10:00 is a swiss made train, by Stadler. It drives to Venice, Genoa and Bologna.

    36. santo Pino on

      So the ETr200 created 90 years ago was capable of 200km/h but had an operating speed of 160km/h.
      Today we have trains they are capable of 400km/h, are authorised to travel at 300km/h, yet the fastest train, early in the morning, non stop from Milan to Rome travels at an average of 190km/h.
      France Paris to Lion travels at 240km/h, Spain Madrid Barcelona at 218Km/h.

      It doesn't seem like high speed is viable, considering that it takes you 1h to travel 200km then 1h to travel 30km using the Milan slow Metro and bus services.

    37. buioso on

      Milan is the most important city in Italy. It's like a state-city whose economy runs 3x faster than the rest of the country.

    39. Lord Refrigerator Intercooler on

      i like trains but the math doesn't add up compared to cars.

      If i want to visit my family in Rome, i have to drive to Triest and the total amount is 90€ for 1 person.
      That is about 650km.

      My hybrid can do 720km with a 55€ tank and i can take 3 persons with me.
      + we start from my house backyard and end in my cousins back yard.

    40. Marcos Elric on

      Italy is making a lot of progress on the public transport front, but still, the diference between south and north is just too evident. And if we talk about inter city transit, like bus or metro, the situation makes you want to cry. There is no viable public transport between the Naples (The "CAPITAL OF THE SOUTH", imagine in other places) airport and the city center. Is very sad that Italy takes all the stereotypical and beautiful things from the south to do their international marketing but then does not invest on the place properly

    41. BaconDestructor on

      I find the history of their tilting train technology so funny. Started in the UK with its APT project, the technology was sold to the Italian company after the project being untenable within the uk for a few reasons – then, after all that, to the be exported back to UK. Speaks to something about the UK allergy to properly investing in its intercity train lines, upgrading but never properly committing so some of the largest moves that would improve things. Euston's HS2 upgrades moving from 11 to 10 platforms to reduce costs, but resulting delays and redesign work making 10 more expensive anyway is the latest example I have seen. 🤦

    42. Kevin Love on

      An interesting look at the notorious Sheppard "Stubway." Yes, there is high demand for an additional east-west route in Toronto. But this video does not mention why expanding the Stubway is not the right way of satisfying this demand: Cost compared to the alternative.

      Subways are expensive. Sometimes, as with the existing Yonge-University and Bloor-Danforth lines, that expense is necessary in order to satisfy traffic demand. But there is a much better alternative to a Sheppard subway, that has been planned since the 1960's but never funded.

      That alternative is to use the existing Finch Hydro Corridor to build an express LRT all the way across Toronto. Much cheaper, since the land already exists and a surface route is much cheaper than an underground tunnel. And providing much more benefit, since it can expand the existing Finch West LRT so that the local trains will run express east of Finch West Station all the way across Toronto.

      This should have been built a long time ago, but this is Toronto and politics is a thing. I note that this video did not mention the origin story of the Stubway, involving a cynical crony deal with Mel Lastman.

    43. Dan C on

      Pendolino made me reach my girlfriend in Milan superfast from Rome every week in 1994-96, and now the same is happening to my daughter with her boyfriend almost 30 years later, with the even faster Frecciarossa 1000. It's an amazing Italian story, yet so normal to us, that we take it for granted, while in so many other countries railways aren't developed very much. Italians do it better… literally! ❤❤

    44. riccardo perini on

      I did ride on the etr 700 an it wasn’t bad, not as smooth as the freccia rossa 1000 but I definitely would recommend taking it if you have the chance

    45. Avery the Cuban-American on

      Northern Italy being richer than the southern part makes perfect sense history wise. Overseas trade (brought in to the ports of Genoa and Venice, and formerly Pisa when it had a port) plus with its neighbors, spurred by the Crusades, led to the growth of large city-states and rise of the merchant class who'd dominate said city-states in northern Italy. The region also had many sizable towns. Thus, northern Italy was urban while the rest of Europe was still mostly rural. Florence in particular became the center of the financial industry as the gold florin became the main currency of international trade. This region was the perfect place to begin the Renaissance which of course spread to the rest of Europe. Northern Italy today is still the center of industry, thanks to it being so close to other major cities as well as its rail connections to said cities.

      You know Trenitalia's doing something right when the HSR network was literally cited as a reason the defunct flag carrier Alitalia failed. What I really like about the Italian railways is not just the high-speed trains, but rather how cheap and reliable regional railways are. The difference between France and Italy is absurd and very visible once you cross the border.

    46. Felipe Iglesias on

      I love travel by train. Pass Monday I went from Rome Termini to Milan by Italo NTV. Great experience in first class. There are other parts of Italy that will need high speed urgently, for example Milan to Ventimiglia (which is an efficient but slow line, 4 hours by InterCity) and Rome to Sicily (which will need a bridge over Messina's strait, actually under study, again). That will really connect the whole country reducing unncecessary polluting flights that in logistic times are very time consuming and uncomfortable. Great analysis!

    47. FEcciargento on

      6:20 who is watching this after the incident of the freight train in Firenze Castello that blocked the entire Milan-Salerno corridor both hsr and classic networks?
      The new project wouldn't prevent this issue because the tunnel won't skip Firenze Castello: absolute shame 🤬

    50. Andrea Dossi on

      The problem with ital high speed rail is very simple , it’s too darn expensive , any route you take if it’s 2 or more people it’s cheaper to drive even accounting for our high gas and highway pricing.
      Not to mention the state of the regional trains getting you to and from the main railway stations that the high speed trains operate to and from, to this day , I love 25 minutes car drive to the central Milan station , but driving there would require pricy parking in the city and so on so than I have to take 20 minutes bus in the opposite direction as there is no bus service to the smaller train station closer to my house then a 50 minutes regional train to Milan to then get on high speed rail ,thus negating the time saving , I can either drive and park for drop at the Ryanair hub a few kilometers from my house or even take a bus to that airport making it at most a 15 minutes ride , yes there is time lost at the airport but then a quick hop down to Rome or Naples , once in Rome metros and busses as would be done if arriving with the train , resulting in very similar door to door travel time for significantly cheaper prices , Italo is a little cheaper but same issues apply

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