My husband and I will travel from Bolzano to Cinque Terre (Monterosso) in early September 2012. When I query for trains between those two citites on the trenitalia website I'm provided with multiple travel solutions. Wanting to keep this simple as simple as possible, I found a "solution" with only two connections. There are at least 45 minutes between our train connections. Now I have to chose between economy, super economy & base fares. I understand that the economy ticket grants us one change before the train departs. What happens with the economy ticket if the train from the first leg is arrives very late and we miss our connection to the second train? What happens if there is a strike? With this website you can only trains from within the same "solution." The solutions are not flexible. That is; I cannot a train for the first leg from one solution and the second connection from a different and much later solution. I can, however, choose to vary my class and fare type amoung the legs of each solution. This makes it feel like I'm purchasing something where the three trains are somehow connected in their record keeping and that if one train is late, that it somehow won't be held against us when we try to reschedule an economy ticket for the second train. Is this true? Thank you for your advice.
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Elk Grove, CA, USA
6898 posts
Katherine, you are worrying to much. For the most part, the trains are on time. Secondly, by law and an agreement with the unions, the trains don't completely shut down during a strike. Many train runs do stop running but many still remain running. These runs are listed on www.trenitalia.com. For your journey from Bolzano to Monterosso, you will be on at least 3 different trains and possibly 4. Your train from Bolzano-Bozzen to Verona will most always be a Regionale train. There is the rare high-speed but most are Regionales. From Verona to Milan, there are both high-speeds and Regionale trains. For this leg, Trenitalia will most often present you with a high-speed. But, there are Regionale Veloces as well. You just don't see all of them for this leg. From Milano Centrale to Monterosso, you are back to the Regionale or Intercity class train. Question: What is your desire? Fastest trip? lowest cost? Other? Now, a couple of notes. 1) When Trenitalia shows a run with both a high-speed and Regionale trains, you can buy the run in advance online. If you are looking at just the Regionale, you cannot buy on Trenitalia more that 7 days out from the time of travel. For example, you can't buy a Regionale ticket from Bolzano to Verona on a Regionale train online after July 15. There are no seat reservations permitted on a Regionale. Like buses, you can stand if all of the seats are taken. Also, no discounts on the Regionale train. 2) You will have one ticket for each train you will be on. You will not recieve one ticket with all of the trains on it. Looking at the schedules, I see that there is a 2hr gap between 10:02 and 12:02 for the high-speed runs to Milan from Bolzano. Thus if you arrive at 10:00 or so, you do have a wait. Not much you can do about this. There are 39 trains a day making this run. It's unfortunate about the 2hr gap.