Marco Chiandoni

MILAN metro operator ATM has commissioned a new €11.5m centralised traffic control centre, which supervises the operation of all lines except the driverless Line 5.

ALMOST 30 years after the project was conceived, the Salerno Metro suburban line was inaugurated on November 4 by the city's Mayor Mr Vincenzo De Luca.

The enhancement and expansion of rail services has been central to the development of the public transport network in the autonomous Italian province of South Tyrol. Thomas Widmann, regional minister for mobility, tells Marco Chiandoni how the province's commitment to rail has been rewarded with rapid growth in ridership.

ITALIAN State Railways (FS) has pledged a number of measures to improve conditions for open-access high-speed operators, responding to the findings of an investigation by the Italian Competition Authority, which concluded that FS subsidiaries had deliberately attempted to exclude competitor NTV from the market.

MR Giuseppe Sciarrone, CEO of Italian open-access high-speed operator Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori (NTV), issued his resignation on October 2. The company's steering committee has appointed its president Mr Antonello Perricone as his replacement.

ANSALDOBREDA has filed a lawsuit in a court in Utrecht, Netherlands, against NS Financial Services and Netherlands Railways (NS) for failing to fulfil their obligations under the contract for the 16 V250 high-speed trains which AnsaldoBreda supplied for the now-aborted Amsterdam - Brussels Fyra service.

THE first two of eight new Stadler Flirt emus purchased by the autonomous Italian province of South Tyrol, local transport authority STA, and Trenitalia at a cost of €69.5m were delivered to Bolzano on September 3.

FOLLOWING an international tender, Saudi Railways Company (SAR) has awarded Italferr, the engineering subsidiary of Italian State Railways (FS), a €28m contract to design the Landbridge, Saudi Arabia's first rail link between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

A new rail link from the Italian city of Bari to Karol Wojtyla Airport was inaugurated on July 19, when the mayors of seven municipalities served by the Bari – Barletta line attended the opening of the 7km electrified connection.

TRENITALIA and Alstom hosted an event at Alstom's Savigliano plant in northern Italy on June 25 to give the press, passenger associations, and representatives of the government of Piedmont a first glimpse of the new Coradia Meridian regional emu for Trenitalia.