Europe's Rising Railway Star | Italian High Speed Rail Explained

this video is sponsored by brilliant check out the link in the description or stay tuned to learn more when people think about European High-Speed Rail their minds have traditionally gone to France or perhaps Spain or even Germany but perhaps the most under-appreciated High-Speed Rail success story of the last several decades is actually in Italy a nation not just of fast cars but also fast trains Italy is one of the world's Railway construction leaders and in recent decades has built a lot of High-Speed Rail and just rail in general what's even more interesting is that Italy was once the leader in High-Speed Rail thinking but sort of fell off the tracks in the late 20th century only to come roaring back as one of Europe's and indeed the world's High-Speed Rail Champions this along with numerous High-Speed Rail Innovations makes Italy one of the preeminent High-Speed Rail Nations out there with the likes of Japan so let's dive in and talk about some fast red trains [Music] hey there my name is Rhys and this is RM Transit a channel where I talk about public transport and the path to a Greener future for the world this year I'm making videos about High-Speed Rail systems all around the world so if you live near a high-speed rail line in France Germany the UK or Taiwan send us an email and perhaps your photos and videos can appear in a future explainer Italy is a country of roughly 60 million people in southern Europe surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the country's North is Switzerland and to the West is Southern France the largest cities in the country Rome Milan turn and Naples form a very nice Arc that just screams High-Speed Rail and better yet filling in the gap between north and south are Florence and bologna with Venice on the northeastern Coast it's also worth mentioning that despite its far from central location Milan increasingly feels like a major center of gravity for the country given its location in the highly prosperous North and better yet we have a Transit explained video on the city and its growing Metro Network that you can check out after this video despite the very nice placement of cities across Italy for High-Speed Rail the country's geography presents a lot of challenges Italy is covered in mountains and large valleys and as in Japan there's also a significant risk of earthquakes in a number of areas as I mentioned before Italy was one of the first countries to dabble in High-Speed Rail in the early 20th century Italy created the precursor to Modern High-Speed Rail with new lines between Florence and bologna and Roman Naples with the geometry necessary for high-speed operations these lines like most electrified main lines in Italy were electrified at 3 000 volts DC which actually requires two catenary wires it's in these lines that you can start to see the emergence of incredible Railway building prowess in Italy in the form of a 19 kilometer base tunnel on the Florence to Bologna line which was at the time the longest high-capacity rail tunnel in the world and is still in the world's top 20 longest rail Town deployed on these lines was one of the first trains that could ever be reasonably called high speed the etr-200 developed by the company which would become unsoldo Breda the etr-200 naturally had a design speed of 200 kilometers per hour though it operated at only 160 kilometers per hour in Revenue Service despite being introduced in the mid-1930s the etr-200 featured many design and Engineering features that are common in modern high-speed trains they were multiple units featured Jacob's bogeys and looked Sleek at least for their time unfortunately despite these great Innovations it wouldn't be until 40 years later that Italy took the next Leap Forward in its Journey towards National High-Speed Rail this would come in the form of the diratissima the name previously given to the roots between Florence and bologna and Rome and Naples which literally means the most direct route when the route opened in 1977 it increased train speeds between Rome and Florence to 250 kilometers per hour around the highest speed allowable under the 3000 volt DC electrification scheme although at that time no trains were capable of running at that speed thus making it the first modern high-speed railroot in Europe following the opening of the Rome to Florence route there was a major lullin High-Speed Rail construction and line openings but in the 2000s new lines came fast and furious with the Rome to Naples route starting to open in 2005 and introducing 25 kilovolt AC overhead electrification and 300 kilometer power operations to the network for the first time enabled by the first ever deployment of etcs level 2. you can learn more about etcs in our signaling video following this many new lines opened in the 2000s including new 300 kilometer per hour Alliance which connected Florence to Bologna and bologna up to Milan Halloween trips between Milan and Naples in under four hours a new high-speed line from Naples South to solerno electrified at 3 000 volts DC allowing a top speed of 250 kilometers per hour also opened creating a very long high speed spine through the country even better as it turns out the Florence to Rome Corridor may actually be able to get faster in the future when it fully moves to etcs signaling to allow speeds of up to 270 kilometers per hour or even 300 kilometers per hour in some sections as its geometry actually allows this as it turns out the Italian high-speed rail network actually looks much more like a t than an I though because there are also high speed lines radiating from Milan which essentially forms the core of Italy's high-speed network from Milan you can go west to Turin or east of brecia and Beyond to Venice the sections of Milan to brescia and Padua to Venice are designed for a 300 kilometer per hour operation and the 25 kilovolt AC electrification that makes this possible but because the distance from Milan to Venice isn't very long and there are a lot of valuable potential stops for important cities on Route speeds are currently lower and electrification is at 3000 volts DC to enable faster Regional services this reminds me a bit of the high-speed rail situation in the Netherlands with the hsl zoud all of these high-speed lines are very impressive and while many current and future lines do run along the auto strata or the highways there's also a massive amount of complex Engineering in the form of bridges and tunnels on the high-speed rail network and interestingly some of the time this isn't urban areas in 2013 a new 10 kilometer City Center High-Speed Rail tunnel in Bologna was opened which allowed trains to more quickly pass through the city another Urban tunnel like this is planned for Florence with a station designed by Foster and partners and a new alignment that will allow through running of high-speed trains as opposed to the current layout that requires reversing out of foreign Santa Maria Novella station speaking of star architecture the Italian high-speed rail network has it in space Regio Emilia station was designed by Santiago kalatrava Naples new bypass station is by zaha Hadid and the upgraded for through running tibertina station in Rome was designed by Palo desideri I quite like the boldness of these stations which not only reflects the powerful service unlocked by high-speed trains but also the Ultra Modern trains themselves and speaking of trains Italy has a broad variety of them on its high-speed network but perhaps the most interesting is the ETR 1000 which was designed by Bombardier and ansaldo Breda to hit maximum speeds of up to 400 kilometers per hour the highest in the world however no track in Italy is certified for Revenue Service above 300 kilometers per hour and plans to increase speeds have been stalled experience from China and Japan seems to suggest that speeds far above 300 kilometers per hour tend to lead to lots of additional train and track wear that just isn't necessary unless you really need those speeds for competitive travel times which Italy generally does not there's also the very cool looking agv575 which is an emu like the ETR 1000 and it's actually alston's emu high-speed train model capable of top speeds of up to 360 kilometers per hour interestingly it was Italy rather than France to use the French manufacturer's first high-speed emu while high-speed trains in France all use locomotives and trailer Cars albeit with some additional powered bogeys now what you might notice is that The Branding on the ETR is different from the agv that's because Italy actually has the world's first private Open Access High-Speed Rail company and TV founded by a former chairman of Ferrari whose Italo high-speed trains compete with trinitalia which is Italy's National Railway company and of course has its own High-Speed Rail services this has led to lower more accessible fares and more services and in turn has caused ridership to increase massively with an over 5x increase since 2008. what's more interesting is that a significant portion of ridership growth has actually been picked up by NTV whose trains now make up a significant portion of the high-speed rail Market moving nearly 20 million passengers per year there are of course additional Services operated besides the highest speed trains as well historically Italy's difficult geography led to a lot of curvy lines that were difficult to speed up the introduction of tilting trains known as pendolinos a technology Italy took a great effort to develop allowed services on many routes such as the Legacy Rome to Milan line to have increased speeds by increasing passenger Comfort rounding Corners at high speed interestingly though the fastest trains in Italy mentioned above do not tilt and Italo actually employs pendalino line ETR 675 trains that are unique looking but don't actually tilt what's fascinating is that the pendolino train line which was acquired from Fiat by Alston has been a pretty significant export success with sales to the UK China Poland and Spain albeit with some of the trains not actually featuring The tilting functionality and all trains having a sub 300 kilometer per hour top speed of course different train types are run on different levels of service with the 300 kilometer per hour class ETR 1000 the 250 kilometer power class ETR 600 and ETR 700 and the locomotive pulled ETR 500 operating as fretcha rasa or red arrow the 250 kilometer per hour class etr-485 trains operate as fretcha Argento or Silver Arrow the etr-610 trains which operate between Milan and Switzerland do have the silver Livery of the fretcha Argento but they're branded instead as Euro City and the lower speed still services such as those operating along the Adriatic Coast are known as freche Bianca or white Arrow the latter two types of servers are critical because they serve areas not currently on the high-speed Network such as Regio Calabria as well as parts of Northern Italy while retro process Services mostly stay on the high-speed corridors it's worth noting that the ETR 700 are actually the trains that likely pushed anselda Breda over the edge as their catastrophic 39-day deployment in the Netherlands for a short-lived High-Speed Rail service was full of issues you can hear more about this in my previous Ben Lux High-Speed Rail video however after work was done to properly certify the trains they Now operate some services in Italy though I'm not sure I'd want to ride on them and if you're curious a lot of Han Solo Brady's work lives on as part of Hitachi rail Italy Beyond just domestic train Services high-speed trains also cross international borders into and out of Italy as I mentioned before there are a number of daily Euro city services to Zurich in Switzerland as well as retro rasa services to Leon in France now if you feel bad that trinitalia has to compete domestically well don't because they actually compete in other countries themselves as discussed in my Spanish High-Speed Rail video trinetalia's eerio operate services in Spain with a fleet of modified ETR 1000 trains now fortunately there's also going to be lots of new High-Speed Rail coming online within Italy to keep the network and passenger numbers growing for decades into the future a roughly triangular route is being built between Genoa Milan and Turin with planning underway on the legs from Turin and Milan to the common line into Genoa meanwhile in the country's Southeast the existing Naples tabari rail line is being upgraded for High-Speed Rail across the country and it's just the first of a number of planned high-speed railroads into southern Italy which also include a route from Salerno to Regio Calabria which may someday be extended to Sicily where Railway upgrades are ongoing the full Milan to Venice High Speed Line is also coming along well and when completed it will offer much needed additional speed and capacity throughout the country's North you see there are two massive new international rail projects being built right now that will better connect Europe's Railway networks and these two projects are some of the largest not just in Europe but in the world and of course both impact Italy directly the first is the Leon to Turin Railway which will join the French and Italian High-Speed Rail networks with tracks through the mountains capable of over 200 kilometers per hour enabling trains to travel from Milan to Paris in as little as four hours the new Railway will be nearly 300 kilometers long and will include a nearly 60 kilometer long base tunnel which will just barely surpass the gothard-based tunnel in Switzerland as the world's longest there's also the enhanced corridor from Verona between Milan and Venice to Munich via Innsbruck Austria this route includes the brenner-based tunnel which is also over 50 kilometers long and will eventually allow relatively high speed travel from Berlin all the way into Italy both of these projects are massively expensive controversial and won't be completed until well into the 2030s but they will allow much faster passenger train trips between France Germany and Italy all while allowing Freight volumes to grow significantly thanks to gentler grades and curves both projects have design speeds of around 250 kilometers per hour though operating speeds will be a little lower as with these similar Services through the gottard base tunnel but the impact on travel and the geography of Europe will be enormous and these projects will only further strengthen Italy's high-speed rail network which should be a model for other countries in so many ways from its Sleek modern trains to its iconic infrastructure affordable fares International connections and its Urban corridors and stations that better optimize train movements it's a system that gets so much right which means it's hard to fault it for taking longer to emerge than some of the other networks unlike its F1 team in recent years if you've stayed to the end of this video I'm sure learning is one of the things you actively enjoy doing whether it's about Italy's high-speed rails science and technology or other topics it's really easy to gain a greater understanding of the world and find the things you encounter in your daily life more interesting by doing a bit of learning every single day and billion.org can help you do just that brilliant is the best way to learn math computer science and data science interactively and it has thousands of lessons in each of these topics from foundational and advanced math to AI data science neural networks and more with new lessons added monthly I have a degree in computer science and even though I'm not obviously using it for my current career it's still something I'm quite passionate about because computer science teaches you how to think Brilliance visual Hands-On approach is such an effective way to learn and internalize Concepts and the way that lessons are broken down into bite-sized pieces ensures that you can gradually Master topics just by spending 15 minutes on brilliant a day and better yet you can even learn on the go on your phone tablet or computer so you can chew on learning that complicated algorithm even on your train commute I've been going through the computer science fundamentals course from the very beginning and Brilliance lessons are structured and broken down quite unlike say your programming 101 course from freshman year but they grasp you with interesting problems and high level Concepts and then they break them down into bite-sized pieces that give you the why behind fundamental concepts of computer science such as this one on parallelism that uses a real life example of a bakery owner's work schedule and tasking with the goal of optimizing its efficiency to try everything brilliant has to offer free for a full 30 days visit brilliant.org RM transit or click the link in the description it's really actually a lot of fun the first 200 of you will get 20 off brilliant's annual premium subscription so go to brilliant right now and start learning [Music] special thanks to Dr dewat giulio Luca Martino and supersaturated spherical solid for their footage and local expertise that helped me make this video [Music] foreign

Channel: RMTransit

Views: 103,283

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning, italy, trenitalia, high speed, high speed rail

Id: -FEBMWSpIVE

Length: 16min 11sec (971 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 15 2023