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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 · 14h

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 · 14h

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 · 14h

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 · 14h

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 · 15h

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

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 19h

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

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 19h

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 · 19h

Is this bi-directional?

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

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.

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Well, without going into depth, they look like the usual French approach (very high-quality urban environment), entirely dedicated RoW, but with a few interesting features like the "voie entrelacée" on a segment shared with traffic, which I guess is regulated via a traffic light

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Excellent video. Thanks for sharing. There are quite a few interesting urban integration solutions.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

You can still have the AdE handle the technical work of collecting taxes, which is more efficient when done at scale. The problem is that local govt can't impose local taxes for services they run. They actually have less now than before, since residential property taxes have been partially abolished

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Unfortunately, the only party that was pushing for fiscal devolution framed it as an anti-Southern Italy crusade making fiscal devolution politically toxic. And now they pivoted to plain ethno-nationalism.
I don't see a lot of political space for meaningful fiscal reform in today's Italy...

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

But I think it's true that in the Italian context of limited local fiscal autonomy the incentive in growing the population isn't really there. There is (was) an incentive in increasing taxable non-residential area, because of the property tax on non-residential properties and the development fees

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, up to 100% nowadays, but it's not a dependable and programmable source. It's based on a call for projects, and its funding depends on the amount of money governments allocate to the mass transit fund in each budget law.
And national opex subsidies have been going down for the past decade

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Local governments can impose and additional local revenue tax, but it's capped at 0.8% IIRC. Not quite enough for the welfare and urban service functions they need to provide.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Search for "descriptive report of Bologna's General Urban Plan Changes"

First results: the direct link to the document, which is of course publicly available.

AI overview: "this report isn't publicly accessible as a separate document"

🤷

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

I think that the real non-political barrier, at least in Italy, is how you fund improvements in transportation, urban quality, and city services in a context where cities don't have a property tax. It's a real issue because development fees have limits and are one-shot.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

I can't find any article in English, but essentially, the infill policy in Milan has been under investigation for two years now, de facto paralizing permitting in the city and resulting in several resignations in the city executive committee.

This is a good start: www.ilpost.it/2025/05/09/i...

Questo palazzo è stato costruito in mezzo a un cortile? - Il Post

È la questione attorno a cui gira il caso giudiziario che ha fatto iniziare le inchieste sull'urbanistica a Milano

www.ilpost.it

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Yes. Essentially, the fact that the economic math of buying and demolishing a concrete or masonry building really makes sense if you double density, which is something that is politically tricky. See what happened to the "aggressive" infill policy of Milan...

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

Oh, definitely. I was speaking in general.

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

I agree. Especially because I think that densifying at scale already dense cities is harder than densifying single-family neighbourhoods like it should be done in NA.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 1d

It reminds me of Milan, whose development is strongly unbalanced toward the Northern half. But in that case, it's a pattern that predates the modern era because of the different nature of agriculture and linked human settlements.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 2d

You know, over the years, I have met quite a few people who, unlike me and you, have actual power in shaping infrastructure projects and way too many of them think that all you need to make a project happens is "leadership," and planners are just bureaucrats getting in the way of doing things...

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 2d

I'm not saying that zoning keeping inner areas deliberately low density isn't distorting price markets. But a scenario where development is totally unconstrained by zoning and green belts, we would probably see both densification and sprawl, b/c there is demand for SF housing.

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