Luigi Ferraris, Chief Executive Officer of Ferrovie dello Stato Group signed theeditorial of the latest issue of Longitude, the first Italian magazine on economics and international politics in English, distributed throughout the world. Ferraris, despite international tensions and geopolitical instabilities, has optimism for the future because according to him a turning point has been reached for mobility and for the country.
The point of view of the CEO of FS
In his speech, Ferraris drew attention to the crucial choice that Europe and Italy must make in the face of the global transformations underway. According to him, the alternative is between witnessing these transformations as spectators or become a “significant player”i.e. taking an active role and leading the change. The recent crises, such as the war in Ukraine and the pandemic, have had a profound impact on the way we live, work and travel, but they have also pushed Europe to activate policies of greater financial solidarity and a greater boost to public investments. In this context, the FS Group intends to play a leading role in the Italian recovery, investing heavily in infrastructure and energy transition, two crucial areas for the future. In particular, it is important to modernize the railway network, which in some cases is over 60 years old. Fs wants contribute to the development of multimodal mobility of people and goods, not only in Italy but also in Europe, where the Italian system of high-speed networks represents a cutting-edge model, thanks to its technological know-how, its digital and resilient infrastructures and its quality design. The success of Frecciarossa in Francepe in Spain, where FS has activated its commercial service last November, demonstrates the validity of this model and the possibility of expanding its impact beyond national borders.
The importance of the industrial plan of FS
Ferraris also stopped to explain the Industrial Plan of the FS Group with the beyond 190 billion investments in 10 years and its priority objectives. The main objective of the plan is to create an integrated infrastructure system for railways, roads, stations, ports, airports and freight terminals that is attractive, convenient and environmentally sustainable. “Over the next ten years the capacity of the our rail network will grow by 20%, passengers on collective means of transport by 30% and will double the current 11% share of freight by train, currently far from the European average” explained the CEO. And then two central themes in the Industrial Plan of FS: theself-production of energy from renewable sources and digitalisation, which comes with connectivity. On the energy front, the goal is to cover "at least 40% of our needs by 2027, reaching a power of over 300 megawatts already by 2024." Then a word about the project “Gigabit Rail and Road”, which has already found funding of 2 billion euros in the latest Program Contract with the State and will make it possible to bring the wi-fi connection along over 17 thousand km of railway lines of the FS and in over 220 stations, reaching rural territories today with poor connection.
The objectives achieved by FS
At the end of the editorial, Ferraris also underlined the results already achieved by the Group: “As far as infrastructure is concerned, last year our Polo Infrastrutture, with RFI, it launched tenders for 2022 billion euros in 21, of which about half for works from PNRR, and has awarded works for 10 billion euros. Another 9 billion eurosANAS, among other tenders announced and awarded, for a total investment plan, in just one year, of 33,5 billion euros. In the passenger hub, Trenitalia has enriched its fleet with 128 new regional trains, and another 112 will arrive by the end of the year. Busitalia has signed a agreement with Iveco for the purchase of 150 electric city buses. With the Logistics hub we have launched a 2,5 billion euro plan to renew our fleet of new generation locomotives and wagons and signed agreements with major operators such as Hupac and MSC to promote intermodality and integrated logistics. With ours Urban Pole we have increased the number of station car parks in important locations such as Roma Termini, Milano Centrale and Napoli Centrale. We recently have set up a new company, FS Security, to guarantee higher levels of safety on board and in the stations. In this new company we will hire a thousand people over the next three years, and more than 40.000 across the Group during the execution of the Plan. The goal – concludes Luigi Ferraris – is to grow and overcome future challenges. Together."
