An almost invisible but vital job. This is how Ferrovie dello Stato rightly defines it: in fact, the company was forced to cancel a large part of the passenger connections following the travel restrictions imposed by the government, but this did not stop its contribution during these weeks of emergency. . In fact, freight trains are traveling and in recent weeks Polo Mercitalia, the holding company of the FS Italiane Group, has carried around Italy three and a half million tons of medicines and medical materials, milk, sugar, cereals, agri-food and fish products, mineral water and drinks, equipment for plant engineering and repairs, pellets for domestic heating, spare parts, consumer electronics, lighting fixtures, technical clothing and fuel for the Forces of the order and the army.
In short, many goods necessary to support the population and supply the large and medium distribution chains, ensuring what in normal days seems obvious to us, and now it is no longer. "Now that even the most banal activities take on characteristics of unusual exceptionality", writes FS on its own information site, FS News. Such as shopping at the supermarket, standing in line for hours, distanced from each other. “Here – writes the railway transport company -, enter and finding full shelves is one of the last few fundamental certainties which ensure a minimum of peace of mind. Never before has an efficient and safe logistics chain demonstrated its importance for the continuity of services essential for our well-being, not only economic or material ".
The FS Group thus confirms its indispensable role, in terms of environmental sustainability and safety. Also in terms of the risk of contagion from SARS-coV2, because one of the Mercitalia trains carries the equivalent of 32 trucks, minimizes the number of people involved for each ton/km of goods and, therefore, of potential interpersonal contacts. “In recent weeks, the approximately 5.400 railway workers of Polo Mercitalia, of which over 2.100 are train drivers, together with the many colleagues involved in passenger transport and traffic management, are playing a perhaps inconspicuous but essential role in helping Italy and the Europe (Mercitalia with TX-Logistics is present in 11 European countries) to emerge from an unprecedented emergency, the contours of which exceed the most bizarre, dystopian fantasy", writes Fs News.
