Delayed trains: from Avellino-Benevento to Vicenza-Schio, here are the worst lines

Chronic delays, stations that have been closed for years and infrequent trains are the daily challenge faced by commuters using Italy's worst lines. This is what emerges from the new Pendolaria 2025 report by Legambiente, presented in Rome, which lines up data, numbers and proposals. Among the confirmations the former Circumvesuviane lines, marked by breakdowns, cancellations, cuts, and overcrowding; the Roma Nord-Viterbo, which in 2024 saw over 5,000 runs cancelled; the Milano-Mortara-Alessandria, which serves 19.000 people a day, and is characterised by frequent breakdowns and delays, and the Catania-Caltagirone-Gela, one section of which, the Caltagirone-Niscemi-Gela, has been suspended for a good 13 and a half years. For the Rome-Lido there is a slight improvement but there are still many commuter problems on this line.

In general, Legambiente notes, in Italy, rail transport remains a secondary issue and funding to date is totally inadequate. The result is a transport system that is struggling to improve and on which the impacts of extreme weather events weigh heavily, with increasingly frequent delays and interruptions, chronic gaps between the north and south of the country, and cuts to interregional connections.

Among the new entries: the Southeast Railways network, whose completion of electrification and upgrading works is years overdue; the Turin Metropolitan Railway System, which saw a worrying deterioration in efficiency and punctuality levels in 2024; the Avellino-Benevento, where electrification work was due to be completed in 2021, but the deadline has been postponed year after year; the Torino-Cuneo-Ventimiglia-Nizza, with repeated daily interruptions to the already meagre service; the Ferrovie della Calabria network, where the two Taurenian lines (the Gioia Tauro - Palmi - Sinopoli and the Gioia Tauro - Cinquefrondi) were suspended in their entirety in 2011 and lie in a state of neglect; the Florence-Pisa, which, in the last available report of October 2024, was the worst in reliability among those in Tuscany; and the Vicenza-Schio, much frequented by students and workers, but still single-track and not electrified. Also worrying are the cuts made in recent years to interregional connections such as Turin-Bologna, Milan-Venice and Milan-Ventimiglia.

Added to this are critical problems in urban transport infrastructures, between ill-conceived works, such as the Trieste cableway and the Skymetro in Genoa, and fundamental projects that have been at a standstill for years, such as the redevelopment of the Roma-Giardinetti and the Termini-Vatican-Aurelio tramway.

In the South, the situation of rail transport remains critical: the average age of trains, at 17.5 years, is still higher than in the North, where it has fallen to 9 years. Moreover, the rail network in the South is still largely unelectrified and there are several disused lines such as the Palermo-Trapani via Milo, closed since 2013, or the Caltagirone-Gela, closed since 2011, or the lines from Gioia Tauro to Palmi and Cinquefrondi in Calabria, whose service has been suspended for 13 years.