Question: could someone either confirm that the scenario described below is consistent Trenitalia behavior, or educate me on what I'm doing wrong?
Having run out of things to plan for my June 2016 trip to Italy, I was idly browsing train schedules for the rail trips I will book in 3 months when booking opens. I noticed a discrepancy. Trenitalia will ONLY show longer/slower routes when starting from a smaller town (w/o Frecce service). Italiarail shows the fastest routes by default, but will show the same slower routes if you check 'slower trains'. Bahn shows the fastest routes, though some different routes than Italiarail, and will show the slower routes as well, if you uncheck " Schnelle Verbindungen bevorzugen" ("prefer faster connections"). There is no combination of check boxes or standing on my head that will make Trenitalia cough up the faster routes.
My one data point was this trip:
Terni --> Firenze S.M.N. March 19, 2016, one-way
TrenItalia only shows transfers at Orte and/or Foligno, then on to Florence by Regionale or InterCity. It will not show a less direct but faster route. The other two sites show Terni to Rome (Tiburtina or Termini), then Frecciarossa to Florence. That cuts a solid hour off the trip, for only about $5 more in SuperEconomy fares.
My hypothesis is that TrenItalia is programmed to only show the most direct routing, while the others use a total time algorithm. If someone can confirm this, I think it could be a valuable tip to our community to always check multiple scheduling sites before booking train tickets in Italy. I certainly prefer the faster route, which I may therefore have to purchase through ItaliaRail instead of TrenItalia
Comments appreciated.