Train delays begin this week. Starting today, travel times on the Milan-Rome route will increase to five hours.

MILAN – Travel times are rising while prices remain unchanged. Starting today and continuing through the week of August 15th, travelers choosing to travel by train between Rome and Milan will expect journeys to be at least 4 hours and 50 minutes due to maintenance work on the high-speed lines. At certain times, the journey will take as long as 5 hours and 25 minutes. Long-planned, and anticipated by FS CEO Stefano Donnarumma in an interview with Repubblica in February , the network upgrades will extend the journey times of both Trenitalia's Frecce trains and Italo trains.

One hundred more minutes of travel

Specifically, the journey between Milan and Bologna will be extended by an hour—a journey normally completed in 60 minutes on high-speed trains—because Frecce and Italo trains will be diverted to the conventional (i.e., non-high-speed) line between Castelfranco and Fidenza . Trains between Orvieto Sud and Chiusi Nord will also be diverted to the non-high-speed line, resulting in a 40-minute delay. This adds up to a total of 100 minutes.

The summer work is affecting the rail network in several parts of the country and also over longer periods of time. On the Milan-Venice route, between August 5th and 25th, Frecce trains will be rerouted to the non-fast line between Verona and Vicenza, delaying travel by 90 minutes (for those traveling from Milan to Venice).

But no price reduction

For passengers forced to travel longer distances, fares remain unchanged. And consumer associations are protesting: "Today, over 1,200 railway construction sites are active in Italy: 700 for new projects and 500 for extraordinary maintenance, with over €12 billion already invested under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). But these works, expected to last up to three years, are significantly increasing travel times for regional, intercity, and Frecce trains," Assoutenti explained.

Trenitalia already explains the new expected times on the ticket invoice, but prices remain the same and travelers will just have to arm themselves with a lot of patience.