The Italian high-speed train leaves too early, leaving passengers behind. – Panorama

The reliability of Italian trains is one thing, but after recent events one cannot claim that the Trenitalia railway company does not care about punctuality. The story is definitely surreal: On Friday, November 8th, there is the high-speed train Frecciargento from Rome to Genoa left 50 minutes early – namely at 3.30 p.m. instead of 4.20 p.m. – and left dozens of stunned and irritated passengers in the station. The reason is almost even more surreal than the story itself: the stranded passengers were told that the earlier departure had become necessary in order to arrive on time.

Trenitalia itself was a little more cautious in the following days: Due to construction work, this was the only way to guarantee the connection. Now the early departure is certainly a benefit for the trains’ punctuality statistics, which are already not rosy, but the problem is that communication with the unsuspecting passengers obviously did not work. And so the question was: Is a train that arrives on time but half empty a sensible one? One can only hope that Deutsche Bahn doesn’t allow itself to be inspired.

The case becomes a political issue

Unfortunately for Trenitalia, the archaeologist Salvatore Settis also wanted to travel on the train, who then reported the incident in the daily newspaper La Stampa wrote down. Who knows whether many readers will be amused by the story, otherwise it would have received such a great response. In any case, Settis reported that he had built in a lot of buffer time due to a public transport strike and was at the station much earlier. He had not been informed by Trenitalia, so he waited carefully – and then noticed that there was no trace of the booked train on the departure board. When he asked what was going on with the train, he was told that the train had actually already left and that he could happily continue his journey later, according to the motto: At some point and somehow you always get to your destination.

The case became a political issue in Italy faster than the train itself. Lega boss Matteo Salvini intervened and demanded “convincing clarifications” from Trenitalia’s top management. The opposition emphasized that Matteo Salvini, as transport minister, should not demand clarifications, but rather provide them – and not just in this case.

In fact, the reliability of Italian trains is a perennial issue: in 2023, around two out of ten long-distance trains arrived late, and on some routes even half. Although Italy’s high-speed network is praised throughout Europe as a positive example and you can travel from Rome to Milan in just three hours by train, commuters continue to report problems. Some of them were also quite unpleasant for the government: a year ago, a train that was already very late had to be stopped at a station unscheduled so that Francesco Lollobrigida, Minister of Agriculture and then brother-in-law of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, could get to the inauguration of a city park in time.

There were heated polemics back then too – but at least this time there can be no question of any preferential treatment: apparently no celebrities said anything on the train from Rome to Genoa.