Next summer promises to be difficult once again for the many commuters who travel between the cities every day Roman Castles and the Capital for work, study or tourism reasons. Italian Railway Network (RFI) has in fact announced the interruption of the railway routes from the Castelli Romani to Rome starting from July 23rd, for 40 days, until September 1st. The lines affected are those between Ciampino and Albano, Ciampino and Frascati, and Ciampino and Velletri. The only route that will remain operational will be the one that connects Rome Termini with the airport city of Ciampino.
The interruption is due to preparatory work for the installation of the ERTMS system (European Rail Traffic Management System), a cutting-edge technology that aims to improve the safety and efficiency of rail traffic. These works are part of a broader development plan for the national railway infrastructure, also made possible thanks to funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), which requires strict compliance with deadlines.
RFI, the leading company of the Infrastructure Hub of the FS Italiane Group, has planned extraordinary interventions on the railway infrastructure throughout the country for the next few months. The objective is to raise the efficiency standards of the network, guaranteeing an increasingly modern, integrated, accessible, high-performance, reliable and fast infrastructure, both for the transport of passengers and goods.
To improve network performance, it is necessary to provide constant and widespread maintenance interventions. Some of this work has already been carried out successfully during the year. In various regions, numerous interventions are planned which will also affect the high-speed (HS) backbone, leading to further interruptions and inevitable extensions of travel times.
For commuters in the Castelli Romani, the summer will therefore be marked by further inconveniences. However, RFI has promised to strengthen public information in the main stations affected by the temporary circulation measures, with the presence of dedicated staff to assist travellers, who will have to find alternative solutions.
These interventions, although impactful in the short term, are fundamental to improving the Italian railway infrastructure and making it more efficient and safe in the long term. Commuters will therefore have to arm themselves with patience, in the hope that the ongoing works will bring tangible benefits once completed.
The ERTMS/ETCS standard, to be considered among the most significant innovations introduced in the panorama of railway signaling, allows the circulation of trains of different nationalities, on the basis of information exchanged by the ground and on-board subsystems, defined with a common language and managed with interoperable components. In particular, the standard defines the methods of exchanging signaling information between trackside systems and trains, identifying the transmission techniques to be used and the message format.
With the installation of ERTMS/ETCS, the constraints for international traffic that resulted from the diversity between the signaling systems currently in use in different countries are substantially removed.
The ERTMS/ETCS system provides the driver with all the information necessary for instrumental driving, continuously monitoring the effects of his work on the safety of the train’s movement and activating emergency braking in the event of a train speed exceeding the maximum speed permitted for the security.
In the most widespread configuration called level 2, the exchange of information between the ground and on-board subsystem takes place thanks to the GSM-R radio channel, while the Eurobalise (fixed) buoys mainly perform the function of position references. Through the radio channel, the SSB and in particular its intelligent core, the EVC, learns from the RBC (Radio Block Center, which centralizes information on road freedom) the “movement authorizations” for the train. A schematization of the process is exemplified in the following figure.
