Revolution (reverse) from Matteo Salvini: why trains are in chaos
Fabrizio Gatti
Editor-in-chief for Insights
14 January 2025 06:59
Like Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, I am from the generation that played with electric trains. We were divided by social class: expensive Märklin models, highly sought-after Rivarossi, and proletarian Limas in terms of upholstery like mine. I thought about this a few days ago, in the middle of the Salvini era, when we received news of the malfunction of the Central station in Milan and paralyzing half of Italy. Another high speed knockout. With new cuts recurring in Rome-Naples earlier this week. And the kamikaze hypothesis for the image of Italy in the middle of the Jubilee and on the eve of the Milan-Cortina Olympics: the reduction of trains to hide the chaos. Thus, thousands of people remain directly on the ground.
When we started the home train, there would always be someone among our friends who would say, “Let’s go faster.” And as a result of the accident, the wagons were derailed. Or he climbed over the rails and with one inadvertent kick he knocked off the hinges of the Lerino station, an innocent Venetian town whose name is on all the toy facades.
Money for the maintenance of the bridge over the Bosphorus
Matteo Salvini is not the CEO of the railways. Therefore, he is not directly responsible for what is happening on the rails across Italy: daily delays, stopped trains, angry passengers. Below we see the numbers. However, he has an indirect responsibility. Firstly, since he will be the Minister of Transport from 2022; Therefore, it needs to do transportation work. And then because it has effectively taken away billions of resources from the Italian regions that produce the most in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Billions of dollars that Salvini wants to allocate to the last two regions at the bottom of the GDP rankings, Sicily and Calabria (situation at Milan Central Station in the photo below), to be connected by the famous and expensive bridge over the Strait of Messina on November 26, 2024 ).
A state’s resources are limited by definition. We know this very well after the comedy Superbonus. So if I invest billions of dollars in the 2.2 miles that separate the two least snowy parts of our South, something has to be removed from just about everywhere. In other words, in order to connect the 6 million 635 thousand inhabitants of Sicily and Calabria, the government, at the request of Salvini, forces the other 52 million Italians to be patient, not to leave, to stay on the ground: because in the meantime there is no money needed for all ordinary and extraordinary maintenance . Compared to its origins, it is a Northern League in stark contrast. So much so that today, we can be imprisoned on trains for hours. Or not even being able to get there, as happened at Milan Centrale on Saturday, January 11th. With Trenitalia’s seemingly tongue-in-cheek warning: “Avoid traveling by train”.
Nonsense: even a 60-minute delay is “punctual”
Giulio Andreotti, a sly joker who served many governments, said there were two kinds of madmen: “Those who feel like Napoleon and believe they can restore the State Railways.” Instead, if we exclude suburban transport in many cities, the fact that railways were among the first in Europe was enough to put an end to the greed of the politics of that period. Actually high speed. Frecciarossa. Italian. 300km/h rails. Until the two-year period of 2022-2023, when rail progress begins to slow down. At least in terms of punctuality (in the graph below delays by days of the week – source “Other speed”).
According to statistics published by Trenitalia, the proportion of medium- and long-distance trains with more than 5 minutes delay in departure increased from 10.3 percent to 10.9 percent in twelve months: one in every ten Frecciarossa or Frecciabianca trains. Thousands of passengers attended. But the concept of punctuality in Trenitalia’s report is quite flexible: in 2023, 97.9 percent of trains (the latest available data) arrived with a delay of less than 60 minutes. Practically the train within the hour is calculated among those who are on time. What is the purpose of putting such numbers? Here it is: only trains with delays of more than 60 minutes are shown separately, so their percentages are reduced to telephone prefixes.
Crazy idea of letting the Arrows leave early
The public railway company warns that its annual report “excludes delays caused by exceptional events”. So, is the blockade of an airport that paralyzes the entire Italian railway considered normal or exceptional? But the overall deterioration is also felt in the average delay of each Freccia: in one year it increased from 8.2 minutes to 8.7 minutes. It doesn’t seem like much, but for thousands of trains running on time, it’s like the same number of trains arriving later than scheduled. Who knows how such a strange idea as leaving the train 50 minutes early will be calculated in the 2024 report to be published in the next few weeks: Because only in this way could it arrive on time. The incident took place on November 8 at Frecciargento Rome-Genoa. We set off at 16.20. Left Termini at 15.30. Imagine the joy of the passengers who missed it despite arriving at the station on time.
A new report published on January 8, 2025 by European Radicals, a political group opposing the current government of Giorgia Meloni, calculates that 72 percent of Frecces arrived late in the last three months. The 22,865 trains tracked actually accumulated a total of 4641 hours; This is an amount equivalent to almost six and a half months.
Kamikaze hypothesis: cutting trains instead of starting them
The effort to allow an increasing number of trains to operate should be credited to the public management company, Italian railway networks. But an amount that reduces the time available to perform maintenance. Acceleration of works that contributed to serious accidents such as the fatal collision of five workers in Brandizzo, province of Turin, on 30 August 2023. And this leaves passengers at risk of frequent breakdowns.
I’m trying to find Minister Salvini’s comment on his social pages, which have millions of followers. Maybe there could be a few lines of apology and understanding for the Italians who are in a difficult situation. Here’s what I read: “I was acquitted because it stopped mass immigration.” “Fight against illegal immigration and tax cuts, against Christian origins and return to peace”. And so on. Matteo Salvini is the Transport Prime Minister who does not like to deal with transportation. But if the kamikaze hypothesis of reducing trains passes, he will also be a prime minister capable of further deteriorating Italian railways after two decades of growth. He looked a bit like my careless friend who always stumbles upon Lérins station.
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Source: Today IT

Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.