The “railway subway” of Genoa is still an unknown, puzzle about the Terralba station
Genoa. Very little is said about it, perhaps because it should have been ready 8 years ago and the most optimistic forecasts now speak of 2024, barring further postponements. But the Genoa railway junction, work merged into maxi single project of the Third Pass which is worth a total of 6.8 billion, should the first concrete turning point for city public transport, transforming the current urban railway into one real underground, at least in the Voltri-Brignole section. Unfortunately, the conditional is a must because, while on the one hand work continues to create new tracks and make freight traffic and long-distance trains independent, on the other there remain question marks.
The exercise piano included in the executive project (dated 2008) which must be the level of service at the end of the intervention: between Sampierdarena and Brignole at rush hour there is a train every 5 minutes, between Voltri and Sampierdarena every 10 minutes, between Ronco Scrivia and Sampierdarena every 10 minutes, frequencies halved in soft hours. Between Brignole and Nervi it will not be a subway at all since the frequencies will oscillate between 30 and 60 minutes.
Performance which in some cases – especially as regards the Valpolcevera – are very far from those guaranteed by the current service contract between the Liguria Region and Trenitalia, signed in 2018 and valid until 2032, which also introduced a partially cadenced timetable. In short, to reach the standards allowed by the upgrade, more trains and more journeys would be needed.
Doubts that no one has dispelled even during the delivery of the last two Pop trains by Trenitalia last Tuesday at the Brignole station. Liguria will review the service contract with Trenitalia to make the most of the new city subway? “We will see it later, it is not the current theme, with the hope that the Terzo Valico pass will end as soon as possible – the councilor for transport replied Gianni Berrino -. Trains that are in the service contract are already defined, those will arrive, so there are 48 new trains that will arrive by 2023. If we then have to change the service contract for the type of trains we will see it in the coming months “.
The interlocution, therefore, has not yet started. Trenitalia ensures that the new Pop and Rock trains have “performance comparable to that of a subway”Because they are equipped with wide doors for the descent of the second step and 1 accelerations of 1 and 1 square meters respectively. By 2023, 26 must arrive, intended to cover the whole of Liguria. The operational plan of the railway junction provides for 174 trips per day in the Sampierdarena-Brignole section, 138 in Valpolcevera, 92 between Brignole and Nervi, 48 on the line to Acqui Terme.
But it is not the only point shrouded in uncertainties. On the same occasion Trenitalia CEO Luigi Corradi has ruled out for the moment the hypothesis of a new station in Terralba: “This is a speech that will be evaluated but at the moment it is not foreseen”. Yet the project of the knot in a very clear way that some of the metropolitan trains continue beyond Brignole and settles precisely in that area. It all depends on whether it will be just a “technical” head station or one that can also be used by passengers.
“The new arrangement of the Terralba area – reads the descriptive report – sees the construction of three areas, with a total of 19 truncated tracks, dedicated toattestation of the metropolitan service, the maintenance of the railway infrastructure and the ongoing maintenance of regional and metropolitan trains “. However, the tables of the exercise plan read “activation of a new stop for the certified and pass-through metropolitan service“, Although the design is not understood. And pure the pum of Genoa explains: “Following the completion of the upgrading works of the Genoese railway junction, the process of metropolitanization of the network, with the construction of new stops of the metropolitan railway (in particular Erzelli) and the extension of the underground network, up to Terralba, to serve the San Martino area and relative hospital complex “.
The point, as Trenitalia sources explain, is that at the moment the Liguria Region has not yet requested the activation of the new stop. The instrument in charge is theFramework Agreement, the document with which the Region undertakes to book a certain number of paths on the railway network managed by RFI as part of a long-term planning. The current one expires in 2022 and we are currently discussing the new agreement, valid in perspective until 2027 and subject to the presence of a railway junction and Terzo Valico, where the Terralba station could be (or may not). On the same area, moreover, thearrival of the subway (the one proper), a scenario that would make a train station appear redundant a few meters away.
In the node project there is also the rearrangement of the Voltri station, which will be moved about 400 meters further west with the disposal of the current passenger building, and the construction of one new stop in Palmaro. Instead the future station Airport-Erzelli, to be connected to the Cristoforo Colombo and the technology park with the monorail, is not included in the Terzo Valico maxi package but is already in the planning stage. The same game is part of the relocation of the Cornigliano station to via San Giovanni d’Acri.