The escalators are still stopped, a condemnation for those who find themselves having to drag a heavy suitcase behind them. The lighting is too dim, which does not enhance the sense of safety while waiting for the train at your platform. As if that wasn’t enough, the internal signage is unclear and forces Turin residents and tourists to do endless goose chases before managing to orient themselves in the corridors. These are the flaws of the “Turin Airport” station, two months after the activation of the new Turin-Ceres line which is already registering a thousand passengers every day. An extra step is needed to improve the service, for this reason the president of the Region Alberto Cirio and the mayor Stefano Lo Russo wrote a letter addressed to the Italian Railway Network and Trenitalia. A sort of “cahiers de doléance”, which takes care of all the complaints received in recent weeks from citizens who use the line, to stimulate rapid intervention at the top of the two companies.
One of the main problems reported in the letter concerns those arriving from outside the city: especially in the Lingotto and Porta Susa stations it is rather complicated to understand which is the direct line to the airport Sandro Pertini, or many still don’t know that the Ciriè direction is also the one for the Caselle airport. Among the requests there is also that of strengthening the ticket office, in front of which excessively long queues often form. It also requires the activation of a monitor that indicates the real-time times of the next departing trains. In short, everything needed to guarantee a service worthy of a city that is (re)discovering itself more and more tourist-friendly and which is almost fully booked in hotel rooms over the Easter weekend. «It is essential to continue the work done so far and we have asked RFI and Trenitalia for an effort to further improve the usability of the line – says Cirio – We also need to improve the accessibility of rail transport for people with disabilities or reduced mobility».
Mayor Lo Russo’s position is similar: «A few months after its inauguration, this connection, which we knew was strategic for the area, is registering considerable interest – he explains – For this reason we felt it was our duty to place the heads of the lines and of the railway service aware of the critical issues that citizens and tourists report to us, certain of finding their willingness to collaborate to resolve them in the shortest possible time”. An input favored by the data regarding the use of this line: since the inauguration on January 20th, the number of passengers has increased by 47% on weekdays and by 171% on holidays. A strategic service for the area, so much so that initial estimates say that at least a thousand people use the Turin-Ceres line a day.
