LAWN. The journey of a few dozen commuters who today, 12 June, took a couple of replacement buses from Bologna at 3.10pm and arrived in Prato no earlier than dinner time turned into an odyssey. This is told by one of them, a student at the University of Bologna headed to Prato.
«Today, returning from university, I took the 3.10pm replacement bus which should have arrived at the San Benedetto Val di Sambro Castiglione dei Pepoli station at 4.10pm – he says – and then took the connection towards Prato Centrale at 4pm ,22. Two buses left from Bologna Centrale as the capacity of just one was not sufficient to transport all the passengers and due to an accident on the A1 motorway the drivers had to take an alternative route and we arrived at the San Benedetto Val di Sambro Castiglione station dei Pepoli at 4.40 pm discovering that the connection to Prato Centrale had left according to the timetable on the board without waiting for us. At this point we started calling the Trenitalia reference numbers to find out how it was possible that they had made the train, probably empty, leave without waiting for us and we were told by the operator that there was a lack of communication between the driver and the conductor and therefore the train left on time. At this point we asked for the problem to be solved with another train or a bus that would take us to our destination but we received a response of no, there is no way to even get a bus to pick us up even if it was in the station square. three large ones and two small ones are still. Furthermore, we are stopped in a station in the middle of nowhere, far from the town, without Trenitalia staff, with the bar closed and without even an automatic machine to buy a bottle of water. We are two buses full of people, among which there are also children and elderly people, abandoned in the middle of nowhere by an already terrible service without basic necessities (water and food) and we only heard that we have to wait for the 6pm train ,42. Something like this should never happen and above all they cannot tell us that they cannot solve the problem. All it takes is a bus that comes to pick everyone up and take us home. Or they could have told us to take the 4.10pm bus which would arrive directly at Prato Centrale, but instead we are here waiting and hoping that no one needs to drink or eat because we don’t have that either. A state service that seems to abandon citizens.”
