Ferrovie dello Stato and Cassa depositi e prestiti have signed a promotion and development agreement which provides for new investments to build urban metro networks and infrastructures for rapid mass transport.
The agreement was signed today by the managing director of FS, Renato Mazzoncini and by the correspondent of CDP, Fabio Gallia.
With this agreement, the two companies undertake to collaborate actively to identify and promote projects relating both to new works to be built (greenfield initiatives) and to the expansion of existing infrastructures (brownfield initiatives), according to an approach aimed at encouraging the participation of private capital, also through the use of public-private partnership schemes.
According to what can be read in the note issued by the Railways: "The commitment of FS Italiane and Cdp aims to produce its effects not only in terms of improving urban mobility, but also by boosting a process of 'Urban transformation' of Italian cities through the creation of a network of new generation integrated services, in favor of the individual and the community".
Fabio Gaul, the chief executive officer of cdp declares that “the development of local infrastructures is at the heart of cdp's strategy to support the country's sustainable growth. The partnership with Fs Italiane intervenes in this direction, with the aim of accelerating investments in urban mobility, giving impetus to an 'Urban transformation' process with multiple positive economic, social and environmental effects, in favor of the communities locals".
“Italy lags behind other European countries in the field of infrastructure for mass rapid transport,” he commented Renato Mazzoncini, CEO of Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane. “In particular with regard to the underground network. Today, in fact, in Italy we only have 230 km of network, compared to almost 300 km in the city of Madrid alone. The efficiency of the metropolitan urban transport network is essential for the development of integrated door-to-door mobility. FS Italiane, after having created the Italian underground with the Arrows, now wants to commit itself to favoring the overcoming of the infrastructural gap at an urban level by designing, building and managing the necessary infrastructures in collaboration with partners and local authorities”.
Meanwhile, the FS group starts a positively conclude the dispute with the Antitrust on the Trenitalia ticket office. The competition guarantor has accepted the changes to the "telematic system for searching and purchasing travel solutions" capable of expanding the number of solutions offered to consumers". The intervention, specified the same Antitrust, was carried out after the Authority's sanction last July. The amendments, continues the note, were deemed "suitable by the Authority to overcome the profiles of deception and omissiveness of the censored commercial practice". Trenitalia will now have to provide the Authority, within the next ten weeks, with a report on the definitive implementation of the interventions on the timetable search engine.
FS claims that the Antitrust "has recognized the validity of the solutions identified by Trenitalia to adapt its sales systems to customer needs". The company underlines that it "has always acted in a transparent manner" intervening "to identify the improvements to be made to its sales systems in order to satisfy the needs of customers in an ever more complete manner in the spirit of continuous and constant improvement in relations with its customers, which has always been the primary objective of the company”.
