Ridin' the Italian High-Speed Trains

Probably the safest way to get around in Italy, driving a car is dangerous.  The road signs are mere suggestions!!!  Everybody drives like they're Mario Andretti.

Sorry to hear that about ltalian driving...France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland .. could be driven in the 1990's.  Their trains worked, too.  Not so much GB which requires schizophrenia to reorient and drive.

Wow, what a coincidence. Just got back from almost a month in Italy and Slovenia. Took many trains but also rented a car for portions of the trip.

Rome, Florence, Bologna, Verona, and Lake Garda. Into Slovenia and finished in Venice.

RICHS09, great pics, looks like quite an enjoyable trip.  Can I ask one question, what is meant by the term open access?  Thanks!

Sounds great. A lot different from when I rode Florence to Venice and Venice to Rome back in 1976... a lot different!

We did not drive - primarily because we were in three cities - Rome, where you wouldn't want to even think about driving (makes Boston look sane), Florence, and Venice - where everything is via boat.  Parking in Rome was also a source of amusement, especially for the small cars like Smart, which are basically as long as they are wide.  So, if one couldn't parallel park, then just park it perpendicular to the curb...!  Not for the faint of heart...

Open Access -- here's a link that explains it better than I can - though I think some of it is out of date, as Italo (NTV) runs High speed trains (all they run, I think) between most of the major cities, not just Rome - Florence (as the article seems to imply).  Our Italo train from Rome to Venice started in Naples and our train from Florence to Rome started in Milan and ran to Naples.  https://www.pareto-design.com/...-story-of-ntvs-italo

The one-sentence summary is that the high speed rail network is government owned and they opened access up to private rail (after some messing around), who - if they met the requirements - can buy access.  I think there was some additional foot-dragging about access to the stations - but that appears to be resolved as well.  The three stations we were in - Rome Termini, Venice Santa Lucia and Florence Santa Maria Novella - have all been updated and/or rebuilt within the past 10 or 20 years and the Italo and Trenitalia trains sit side by side.

One thing I learned from the above link is that one of the original owners of NTV was/is from Ferrari -- no wonder the Italo trains are decked out in that gorgeous red!

Sounds like you had a good time, it is especially amazing to hear "on time" with Italian train service. Back in the day, not all that long ago, if the engineer and conductor decided it was a nice day out and they wanted to have their lunch, they would stop the train, get off and have a picnic by the side of the tracks (and I am not kidding about that), or if some 'outrage' had happened the rail workers would stage 'mini strikes' lasting anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple of hours (and that outrage could be something management said or did, or some event they didn't like and decided to protest). 

I have three data points - so any generalization is suspicious.  But we were within 5 to 15 min of the schedule (2 on Italo and 1 on Trenitalia).  The trackage between Venice and Bologna is not rated as high-speed rail.  But the government has spent a lot of money upgrading the lines between Bologna and Florence and between Florence and Rome, such that these trains really rock 'n roll in those corridors (non-stop).  With 93% of the high-speed trackage between Bologna and Florence in tunnels, you'd think that part of the route would be slower, but that didn't seem to be the case.  At speed, you could really sense the compression wave going into the tunnel and the depressurization on exit.  Some engineer somewhere must have also done the calculation for how much Bernoulli-induced deflection there is between two high speed trains passing in the opposite direction.  You could certainly feel the sideways 'tug'.

My impression - based only on what I've read - is that with the entrance of NTV (Italo) into the high-speed rail market, Trenitalia has 'cleaned up its act' - introducing the Freccia trainsets and lowering prices.  You can see in the link in my earlier post that Italo has grabbed significant market share since they entered in 2012.  I think if I were an Italian taxpayer, I'd wonder if NTV was paying for their share of the infrastructure R&D, improvements/maintenance.  I have no reason to believe they aren't.  OTOH, Italian taxpayers may have other priorities for their concerns...!

One other feature of Italy's high speed rail network - to some (perhaps large?) extent, they are also driven by the development of high-speed rail all over Europe - which also has an 'open access' feature to it.  ICE (German) and SNCF (ze French) have trainsets that run between Berlin and Paris (I'd love to do that).   There's the chunnel Eurostar between London and Paris (I've done this).  And the Bologna-Florence line is part of the EU corridor 1 'project' that would link Berlin and Palermo (Sicily) via tunnels under the Alps (2200 km; 1400 miles).  I'd sign up for that ride.

BTW, the rail distance between Boston and Omaha is 1650 miles (via NYC, Philly, Pgh, Cleveland, Chicago) - I wonder how the population density along the rail route compares with Berlin - Palermo -- jes' sayin'

Thanks for posting your experience. Interesting how private competition has improved service and lowered rates. Hopefully that will catch on stateside. 

1400 miles is a pretty good run. Haven’t been to Europe and supposed it was more compact. I’d really like to ride the Glacier Express someday. Will need to think about adding to that plan. 

But something else I think is not being told.  When anything doubles its speed, the energy needed for that increase is not doubled, but squared, I believe.  Depending on the energy source of the overhead, HSR may not be that "green".

Dominic Mazoch posted:

But something else I think is not being told.  When anything doubles its speed, the energy needed for that increase is not doubled, but squared, I believe.  Depending on the energy source of the overhead, HSR may not be that "green".

When anything accelerates from one velocity to another it takes power/energy to do that,that is true for any moving body. And yes,the kinetic energy is a function of velocity squared,you double the velocity Kinetic energy quadruples, but again that is true of a car or airplane. Once something gets to speed then the amount of power usage drops,to maintain speed you are working against forces like friction and wind resistance. To bring a car to 60mph from 0 requires a decent amount of hp, to maintain it is roughly less than 10hp for a car w decent aerodyamics and standard tires.

Other factors,given the number of people it carries,on a per passenger mile basis it is way greener than a car would be,especially given they are mostly electric, and on a pollution basis even if you account for the pollution from electric power generation (which in europe is heading towards lower and lower,they aren't promoting coal burning to generate electricity and have phased much of it out).

Compared to a car it most certainly is more green on pollution generated per passenger mile (including over electric cars running on battery) and is less polluting than a jet engine on a per passenger mile basis.  Doesnt mean high speed rail makes sense for all travel,it doesn't, but it is green even if power comes from fossil fuel and is even more green as they switch to cleaner power generation.