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Florence railway closure

It was already told in this area, from 3pm yesterday to 3pm today there are works in Florence around a bridge over railway, locally known as "Ponte al Pino". Unfortunately, the bridge is over the railway triangle joining Santa Maria Novella, Campo di Marte and Rifredi station. The bridge will have to be demolished and rebuilt, today they are installing a temporary walkway over the tracks for the time that there will be no bridge.

This means that today railway connections are severed. If you have to travel from Rome to Milan, you go by train to Florence Campo di Marte, take a bus there to Rifredi and find a matching train in Rifredi to Milan; you will need an extra hour and two changes. SMN station can't be reached from the south. - Railway traffic has been cut to 50%, regional trains end in Campo di Marte and some trains are rerouted through the east coast railway.

You have to stay tuned as this is only the preliminary work. Before the end of the year, seven work days (not necessarily consecutive) like this one are being planned to tear down the old bridge and slide in place a new one. Dates are still to be announced, but you will notice the severe reductions in national railway timetables in some selected days.

UPDATE: RFI (railway track managements) foresee a 96-hours closure in the first week of July, an 80-hours closure in the last week of July and a later additional 12-hours closure to remove the temporary walkway.

To tell all the truth, this week the number of railway passengers was much reduced, a lot of people were hired to help the railway passengers but conflicting infos were reported and people had some difficulties understanding the master plan.

Posted by
11322 posts

Oh wow - this is really something. Thanks for the early warning , Lachera.

Posted by
1 posts

What advice can you give for people traveling this route in July on the affected dates? I just looked at the timetables for the train from Venice to Rome and there are no trains available the day I wanted. Should I wait and see if a few get added? Or take a bus? Or fly?

Posted by
2089 posts

Summer timetables will be fully loaded by June 15th, so you cannot tell for sure till that date. Anyway, now it is too early to reserve for summer.

Bridge work is going on but still there are no updates on railway closures so no info even on this topic.

Posted by
65 posts

I'm trying to book a trip between Naples and Orvieto in April and am finding most of the options unavailable. Could that be related to this track work? I know that Orvieto is part of some routes to Milan. There's a ticket option that works, but I was hoping for more options on the day I need. I'll stop hoping if I know it's a track repair issue and just book the one I found.

What's the website I could check? I've only been on Trenitalia.

Posted by
2089 posts

No, I do not believe the Florence bridge is the reply.

I suspect it could be some long term issues. Between Rome and Florence there are two high speed (DD) tracks and two old, low speed (LL) tracks. Tracks are subject, all this year long, to works updating the signal system (ERMTS) to allow more trains; usually these works involve canceling a few trains at strange times. The low speed tracks are cronically saturated with slow trains in the section just north of Rome, so I have seen times when services to Orvieto are somewhat reduced as there is not enough capacity.

But I have also seen a work announcement for ERMTS work on April 11th and 12th that will block completely DD tracks and the south section of the LL tracks. On those days trains are not on sale, some connections possible at strange times through regional trains or through Pisa.
https://www.rfi.it/it/rete/i-nostri-progetti/principali-interventi-lavori-programmati/direttissima-roma---firenze.html
(Rovezzano is few kilometers short of Florence Campo di Marte and Settebagni is few kilometers short of Rome Tiburtina, so DD is out from midnight on April 11th to 3pm on April 12th; after 2pm also LL tracks will be out for a long section).

Orvieto is serviced by Trenitalia only, so that is the web page to check.