Analysis
Under Minister Salvini, the trains do not run on time
Since the Lega leader began his tenure as minister of infrastructure and transport, there has been a long series of breakdowns and problems showcasing the inadequacy of Italy's railway system. Saturday’s incident was the latest on a long list.
On Saturday, yet another railway system failure started at Milan's central train station, blocking the movement of trains across half of Italy. The technical problem occurred at 7 a.m., and the situation returned to normal only after 3 p.m. The cause of the fault, police said, was a high-speed train that damaged the overhead line with its pantograph, causing a power outage. Shortly afterward, another train passed through the same section, doing further damage.
The accident caused major delays and cancellations on the Milan-Genoa and Milan-Venice lines. Also affected was the line to Bologna, which was operated on slower alternative routes to partially alleviate the situation for the passengers. More than a hundred trains were cancelled or departed several hours late, and thousands of travelers had to cancel their trips. In the morning, Trenitalia even suggested “avoiding or limiting train travel to what is strictly necessary and rescheduling trips that can be postponed,” while offering ticket holders full refunds.
Among the passengers affected by the failure, who waited for hours in vain at stations across most of northern Italy, there were plenty of unprintable words directed at Matteo Salvini. Since the Lega leader began his tenure as minister of infrastructure and transport, there has been a long series of breakdowns and problems showcasing the inadequacy of Italy's railway system. Saturday’s incident was the latest on a long list, with the worst outage taking place on October 2, when a worker accidentally hammered a nail into an electrical wire at Rome's Termini station, causing traffic to grind to a halt on almost all high-speed lines.
As befits his nickname “Precetto La Qualunque” [translator’s note: a mashup of the name of a comedic character from a popular film series who is a corrupt politician, Cetto La Qualunque, and “precetto,” the act of forcing striking workers in sectors deemed “essential” to return to work in order to guarantee a certain level of service], Minister Salvini has often blamed the frequent railway worker strikes in recent months, passing the buck to railway personnel for the inconvenience suffered by commuters. However, breakdowns such as the one on Saturday show the real critical issue has to do with infrastructure. Every time there is a problem at a single station, rail circulation across much of Italy comes to a standstill.
The minister has avoided making any comment on this issue, and on Saturday he used the same playbook, leaving it to his party colleagues to try to stick the blame on previous governments. A note by the Lega deputies in the Transport Committee blamed “the left” for “decades of saying ‘no,’ lack of maintenance, zero infrastructural development and technological development,” blaming “the do-nothing approach of those who are speaking up today only to criticize those who are doing something.”
Likewise, a note from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport tried to use the failure as a political cudgel: “Decades of disinterest, lack of investment, ideological ‘no’: that is why today we are living in an Italy with a serious deficiency in infrastructure, which explains the events of the last few hours. For the past two years, with Matteo Salvini at the MIT, efforts to reverse the trend have increased, despite bureaucracy and rapid-fire strikes called by left-wing unions.”
Speaking to il manifesto, the national coordinator for the rail sector of the FILT CGIL union, Luigi Ciracì, called these words “pure Salvinian hysteria.” According to the union official, “the minister misses no opportunity to attack the unions, while he should be concerned about the delays on the modernization works already planned and financed, also due to the yellow-green government and not just the left.”
Moreover, according to Ciracì, “incidents like the one on Saturday are not caused by the construction sites for new works and upgrades, but rather by poor routine maintenance and too many trains running in an inadequate amount of space, which should be increased with new infrastructure.”
In this regard, FILT-CGIL stresses that “regarding the maintenance of the network, union agreements have been signed that would strengthen the system, but today they are largely disregarded” by the institutions.
The critical issues with the railway system have been highlighted by Legambiente in its latest Pendolaria report on public transport. According to the NGO, “the country's mobility needs have taken a back seat to the endless race for announcements about major works, such as the Messina Strait Bridge, which have diverted attention from the real problems of those who travel by train every day. What is needed is a real strengthening, with targeted investments to enhance public rail transport, investing in modern trains, the doubling of lines, rail bypasses, upgrades, speed increases, new stations, electrification, efficient infrastructure and sustainable mobility. However, funding is inadequate.”
Legambiente points out that “the increase of €120 million provided in the proposed 2025 budget law for the National Transportation Fund” is a tiny one, to say the least, and the general trend shows funds decreasing from €6.2 billion in 2009 to €5.2 billion in 2024.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/ennesimo-caos-treni-guasto-a-milano-ritardi-in-mezza-italia on 2025-01-12