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Marco Chitti

@chittimarco.bsky.social

6K followers 290 following 6.2K posts

Researcher on urban planning and public transportation. https://marcochitti.substack.com/

marcochitti.substack.com

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · Jun 21

It took quite a while, but the paper about the history of high-speed rail planning in Italy that I co-authored with @beriapaolo.bsky.social is finally out!

It's open source, so you can read it at length (it is pretty long),

But here is a TL;DR: 🧵

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 2h

I did it myself :-)
Unfortunately, I never had time to do it for more cities, but I have data points for Vienna in one of the charts in this post: marcochitti.substack.com/p/getting-bu...

Getting bus priority right. Lessons from Bologna

Why our buses are slow and what need to be done to make them fast.

marcochitti.substack.com

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 2h

Well well, I think we should close that tram line 6 in Zurich then ;-)

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 4h

I agree. it took a whole 5 minutes to understand how to close it

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 5h

The Po Valley desperately trying to solve its air quality problem with one more seasonal temporary restriction of more polluting vehicles.

"I swear, bro, one more Thursday with no Euro <5 vehicles between 8 am and 9 pm will fix it!"

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 5h

Italian cities prefer dominates rule-based restrictions while the Nordics prefer road pricing

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 5h

There is a website tracking Urban Access Regulations across European countries and I guess we have a winner for the country with the most Urban access regulations...

urbanaccessregulations.eu/userhome/map

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 5h

A graphic summarizing the two main options for dealing with the different height of platforms and different lauding gauges of railways and trams in the Italian context.

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 5h

And a nice graphic summarizing some of the technical constraints for the mixed use of rail infrastructure by trams and trains (specific to the Italian context).

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 5h

A nice taxonomy of the different flavours of (urban) rail

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 5h

Fantastic deep dive into the technicalities of the new Italian "tram-train" regulation by CityRailways and the challenges in its application. With plenty of very clear infographics. It's in Italian, but automatic translation does a decent-ish job

cityrailways.com/articoli/ans...

LA VIA ITALIANA PER IL TRAM-TRENO - CityRailways

Scopriamo la nuova norma Ansfisa per l'autorizzazione dei sistemi Tram-treno

cityrailways.com

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 6h

Well, in theory...

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 6h

Trump would love to have a Golden thermostat in the Oval office where he can control heating, but only in "blue" states

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 6h

Up to individuals if the heating is unit-based, to the condominium manager for shared building heating or to the heating provider for district heating.

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 6h

It's from the 1980s, IIRC. Intended to promote energy savings

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 7h

A call with my mom reminded me that in Italy, the period of the year when you are allowed to turn on your heating is set yearly by presidential decree**

**not exactly what you might think it is. It's not like an executive order.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 8h

There aren't many left around, maybe a few older IC and ICN and some carrozze MDVC used on a handful of regional trains

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

You can run at 320 km/h or more on a ballast track without problems. For how railways are built in Italy, ballast-less tracks might make sense only in some tunnels and viaducts

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Why? The advantage of ballast-less is that the tracks won't move over time, allowing for a better platform-train interface for level boarding.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Jokes apart, they don't work in America because the fixed cost of all this specialized machinery is not worth investing in for the minimal workflow they could get. Plus, there is little interest in introducing innovation due to overly prescriptive procurement specs.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Interesting video on the installation of ballast-less tracks on prefab slabs at Roma Termini. A first of its kind in Italy for a surface station.

youtu.be/g4hIzknVchA?...

FAST System Installation - Track Renewal at Roma Temini railway station

YouTube video by Salcef Group

youtu.be

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

That's a very good question. It would be interesting to investigate further.

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

They'll pull a Rennes line A or a Lyon. Not ideal.

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

I'm surprised that we don't see any even minimal surge in service post the early 1990s modernization. There is just a little bump only short before being closed for conversion.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Is this bi-directional?

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 2d

Yep. That's more common in tram projects from the last 5-10 years or so. It's really a big upgrade compared to the projects of the previous era.