“Rail transport must become the backbone of the mobility of the future which will be increasingly integrated, intermodal and sustainable”. The CEO of the said FS Luigi Ferraris group at the Trento Festival of Economics, interviewed by journalist Alessandra Capozzi. The top manager outlined an overview of the Group's commitments for the development of mobility in the country, one year after the launch of the Industrial Plan of Fs.
An all-round look, that of Ferraris, who touched point by point the main challenges and some future scenarios that the Italian State Railways will have to face. Among these, also a reflection on the need to bring together private and public components to finance the works, looking at the entire life of the projects and stopping "thinking in lots. Only in this way, also by intensifying the public-private dialogue, will it be possible to streamline the process and face the many infrastructural challenges on the table". In fact, according to the CEO, the model used for electricity grids could be replicated through capital management regulatory mechanisms and also attracting part of that managed savings, for example, from pension funds and social security funds to future projects.
Infrastructure at the heart of the mobility of the future
At the heart of this new way of looking at mobility for Ferraris are the infrastructure, which obviously need to be modernized, "since in our country they were built in eras that had different mobility objectives than those of today". And the FS Group is doing its part in this, also as the main implementing body of the PNRR “so we are in line with the times”. “Today, for example, we are engaged in two central works: the Third Pass of Genoa, where we have completed 83% of the tunnel and 100% of the doubling of the railway capacity between Genoa Piazza Principe and Genoa Brignole and which will have a decisive impact on transport goods and passengers, and the Naples-Bari line which will allow the two cities to be connected in a 2-hour journey".
Another topic is the promotion of transport intermodality which according to the CEO of FS "must concern both passengers and goods and promote an integrated collective transport offer which must be based on an increasingly dense and coordinated dialogue between the various players of the transport involved”.
Train + plane: agreements with the airlines
And the agreements that the FS Group has signed with airport operators, such as Aeroporti di Roma and airlines such as ITA and Lufthansa, should be read precisely from this point of view, "to promote an increasingly integrated travel experience, thanks to the combined train+plane ticket which allows passengers to be able to purchase their flight and their rail journey with a single check-in” at the dedicated desks of the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport railway station in Fiumicino.
Freight transport
As always underlined by Ferraris, intermodality must also concern the freight transport, which "on rails is still stuck at 10% due to infrastructure shortcomings, but which can benefit from the connection between the railway and road network with the main access points of the country: stations, airports and ports". An integration that can make rail transport the vector for transporting goods over long distances, leaving the so-called first and last mile to road transport. "Only in this way - underlined Ferraris - could we avoid our roads becoming increasingly congested in the future, given that the forecasts speak of the unsustainable scenario of 1 million more heavy vehicles in the coming years along European roads".
Digitization and energy self-production
Furthermore, in the overview of the CEO, ample space is dedicated to two central themes in the Group's Business Plan: the digitization andenergy self-production. “Digitalization – said Ferraris – is connected to the theme of infrastructures because it helps control their status, with predictive maintenance, but also meets the needs of passengers. For this reason, in recent days we signed an agreement with the Government for the development of optical fiber along 16 kilometers of railway networks, which can represent a natural network for offering excellent online navigation on board trains and solving many connectivity problems in the most peripherals of the country. In the meantime, by September the 4G line will be active on the entire Milan-Rome high-speed line and in the coming years it will also be widespread on other trains".
As far as the energy field is concerned, Ferraris reiterated the goal of 40% self-production of renewable energy by 2027. “We have already launched a tender to identify the sites of the first photovoltaic plants. The construction process is progressing. A new tender will be launched in October to identify and build new plants from Northern to Southern Italy. Already from 2024 Fs will begin to generate energy ".
