Tiburtina Station and TAV
A change of speed

Italy’s TAV service was introduced on 14 December 2008 on the 500-kilometer route between Rome and Milan

High speed rail services between Italy’s two principal cities Rome and Milan finally opened on 14 December 2008. In Rome the arrival of the TAV (Treno Alta Velocità) means not only faster links with other Italian cities but is also transforming transport for millions of Romans and tourists within the Italian capital.

By Emiliano Pretto
january 2009

Three and a half hours between Rome and Milan on a red and silver super-train with a top speed of 300 kilometers per hour. By the end of 2009 the journey time will be below three hours.
Italy’s TAV service was finally introduced on 14 December 2008 on the 500-kilometer route between Rome and Milan – the busiest on the Italian railway network. It came at the end of a controversial 15-year project which saw initial cost estimates of €14b in 1991 soar to €66b at the end of 2008.
The speedier service shaves an hour off the lucrative Rome–Milan route, connecting Italy's political and financial capitals in three hours and 30 minutes 18 times a day. Further construction work on the stretch of line between Milan and Bologna will cut another thirty minutes off journey times by the end of this year.

With the TAV Italian Railways aims to grab a large share of the 3.7 million passengers who fly the Rome–Milan route every year.
But it’s expected they won't really start attracting large numbers of air travelers until the time gets well under three hours. Attainment of that goal is expected at the end of 2010 when the track between Florence and Bologna is improved to shorten that leg to 30 minutes and bring the overall journey time between Milan and the capital to two hours forty-five minutes.
The Italian Railways will have to consolidate passenger loyalty before 2011, when it faces private competition in the form of NTV, a new company led by Ferrari president Luca Cordero di Montezemolo.

The new company, which will launch with 25 11-car AGV trains by French engineering company Alstom SA, plans to connect Italy's most important business centres. Unsurprisingly Montezemolo has announced NTV’s high-speed trains will be the same colour – flame-red – as the Formula One Ferrari.

By 2011 Roma Tiburtina will be the hub of an extended national high-speed network linking not just Milan, Bologna, Florence and Naples but also Turin in the north and Salerno in the south.
And the sleek red trains will glide into an ultra-modern new station when a €90m facelift for Roma Tiburtina is completed by the end of 2010.
The project is a complex one as it involves resizing the station, regenerating the surrounding areas and adding a stretch of road to improve the local traffic.

Rendering of Rome Tiburtina

The architects in charge of the station redevelopment are Rome-based ABDR Associates lead by Paolo Desideri.
The new design features a bridge over the existing spinal chord of the rail tracks. It will be a bridge but also an urban boulevard lined with shops and cafés that will reconnect two areas that had long been separated by the sprawling Tiburtina tracks: the residential Nomentano and the more rundown Pietralata.
The Bridge-Station is designed with flexibility of space, elegance and efficiency in mind. The new station will be a 240m long glass parallelepiped raised 9m above the ground, measuring 50m in width.
The 8 floating rooms housing cafés, VIP lounges, shops, restaurants, ticket windows and control rooms will be connected to the ground level by dozens of escalators and lifts – and to the other station buildings by a runway along the side of the bridge.

The 2 squares at either side of the entrances to the station will be redeveloped to accommodate railway offices, a bus terminal, a shopping centre, offices and parking spaces.
Chief architect Paolo Desideri says the redevelopment project aims to bring a breath of fresh air to the area and to set the foundations for a pleasant functional station, creating a new standard for Italian rail stations to come.
Work is well underway. By 2011 Roma Tiburtina will be at the heart of Italy’s new national high-speed rail network.
The next step will be connecting high-speed services with neighbouring countries by completing a high-speed TAV line between Turin and Lyon in neighbouring France. The stretch will be part of a European-wide project to connect Lisbon, Portugal and Kiev, Ukraine, by train.