Commuters, train travel is on the rise. And they're rewarded with fewer services and higher costs.

There is a segment of Italians that knows no demographic pause: continue to grow, every day. But they also continue to be mistreated and ignored, with enormous waste throughout the country. We are talking about the commuters Now approaching a record 3 million, they've increased by 7 percent over the past ten years. More and more people are embracing rail travel as an alternative to the (sometimes expensive) use of private cars.

COMMUTER DISCOMFORTS

But, and here we are in the classic world of Italian paradoxes, while a healthy demand for public transport, the supply of vehicles, services, and lines is decreasing, as if there were a virus. Let's look at just a few numbers to give an idea of ​​this disastrous and wasteful reversal: in the last ten years, state resources to finance public transportation have been cut by 21,5 percentServices, on average, have decreased by 15 percent. 1.300 kilometers of rail lines have disappeared, and commuter ticket prices have skyrocketed between 30 and 48 percent.

While everyone says they want to invest in this form of sustainable mobility, in reality they continue to cut lines that are considered unprofitable (in the same 15 years the High Speed ​​offer has grown by 435 percent), thus wasting both a lever for modernization and healthy investments for the country system and a possibility of radical change in mobility.

ALSO READ: The slowest trains in Italy are in the South. And they're always late, every day.

THE WORST RAILWAY LINES IN ITALY

The lines considered a nightmare for Italian commuters do not spare any region. Piedmont (Settimio Torinese- Ponte Canavese) to the Liguria (Genoa-Savona), passing through the Veneto (Verona-Rovigo) and going down to Lazio, Campania e Sicilia. With the hellish journeys in Circumvesuviana   Agrigento-Palermo line.

The blows and poor service at the expense of commuters do not, as one might think, concern only the lines in the southern regions. Of course: it is impossible to find extreme cases in the North such as the elimination of all rail connections between Campobasso and the sea (it is no coincidence that the cut in rail services in Molise has exceeded 30 percent). But in the rich Lombardia, where people always boast about being in Europe and not Italy, a commuter traveling between two towns in the Brianza area is forced to hop on and off three trains. The journey takes no less than 95 minutes. Here, in Lombardy, 53 percent of the lines are single-track, many are not electrified, and the locomotives run on diesel.

TRAIN PROBLEMS

Not to mention the average age of trains and rolling stock in general. 41,8 percent of Italian trains are over 15 years old. Super trains continue to be ordered for the line.High speed, which is also understandable considering the increase in demand, but in the meantime the taps are being turned off for commuter trains which are becoming increasingly obsolete. 

TO KNOW MORE: "Trains, post offices, roads, things are getting worse for Italians" (Daniele Martini)

REGIONAL RAILWAY PROBLEMS

We should all rebel against the idea of ​​living in a country where those who commute to work, study, or visit a sick relative are condemned to a lower social class, a hellish circle of the disadvantaged.

For example: who travels on trains, those on the local lines granted under concession, which have a safety system decidedly inferior to that of trains, and those who are instead pampered on the high-speed network, the lines of the State Railways. Serie A e B series. The controls for series A are extremely rigorous, severe, and in accordance with the highest international standards; those for series B are left to the goodwill of individual subjects, and do not have the state's seal of approval. The technology for commuter travel is neglected and obsolete, on lines with high traffic volumes and ticket sales, even the Italian railways are technologically up-to-date. Series A and series B. In the carriages of commuters, unlike those of the gentlemen, one travels standing, with the almost mathematical certainty of a delay and a thousand inconveniences, often without air conditioning e without the staff that updates you on the conditions of the journeySerie A and Serie B.

(Cover image credits: Polonius Video / Shutterstock.com)

WHEN ITALY IS DIVIDED IN TWO:

• In Italy, injustice runs on the tracks, here's where train disruptions cause the most problems.
• Calabria: Trains no longer arrive in Aspromonte.
• You're born in the South and you live less. And you're 300 times more likely to be poor.
• Female employment, in the South only 3 out of 10 women work. Half of the North