PISTOIA
The strong storm that sent several areas of the city under water in the night between Monday and yesterday also caused heavy repercussions, for the entire day, on rail traffic towards Florence with numerous delays, cancellations and remodulations of the routes of the various convoys, triggering, inevitably, the anger of the commuters who found themselves at the mercy of the waves and communications that came from the loudspeakers of the various stations.
The main problem was that, when starting the service, the underpass of the Pistoia station was completely flooded and, therefore, impracticable: this meant that, from the early hours of the morning, only one track could be used for the boarding and alighting of passengers from trains heading towards Florence and Lucca/Viareggio. As a result, the delays piled up, leading to sudden cancellations. Proof of this is the 7.09 train which arrived in Pistoia already 20 minutes late or the 18503 which arrived at the station 10 minutes late which had become 15 just before arriving in Florence when a commotion broke out between passengers on board who forced the train conductor to call in the police to ascertain what had happened.
And, from there, all the passengers were transferred to other trains that went from Rifredi to Santa Maria Novella: some took up to an hour and a half to cover a total of 35 kilometers of railway . And the stop of this train then caused, in cascade, further delays.
In fact, all direct connections with Viareggio were canceled in the first part of the morning, partly replaced with an extraordinary Pistoia-Lucca convoy which left at 9.30 already with a 40 minute delay, and subsequently also the journeys towards Lucca as the trains were then stopped in the the Florentine area. The same fate that, for example, also befell 18842 from Montevarchi to Pistoia due to a fault on the line. To these, then, were added the intermittent connections of all the other regional ones with travel limitations between Prato Centrale and Pistoia and vice versa. Finally, the 18822 coming from Arezzo and which was supposed to arrive in Pistoia was also stopped in the wool city, just to stay in the first part of the morning, but the overview did not improve even in the afternoon.
To these, then, we must add a couple of trains that were not carried out between Pistoia and Porretta Terme again due to bad weather, replaced with buses, and to the fact that the day was complex throughout the Florentine hub due to other inconveniences on the Florence-Pisa line which caused further delays and cancellations. Obviously enraged users: after all, precisely from these columns, only yesterday reference was made to standards below the alert level in terms of punctuality on the Florence-Lucca-Viareggio route and there was an immediate plastic demonstration within 24 hours.
SM
