Health prevention travels by train, along the tracks of theAvellino-Rocchetta. No longer just a tourist route – yesterday’s trip to Taurasi was also a success – but a new and important function for the communities crossed by the ancient tracks.
The project is called “Doctor Train” and could be achieved in a short time. The plan is ambitious: a medical train, therefore, which takes advantage of unused railway lines to bring the health service to the populations living along the railway. This is the idea of the “Doctor Train”, winner of the summer school of Telt, the Italian-French company responsible for creating the cross-border section of the Turin-Lyon. The school, named after Telt’s first general director Mario Virano, who passed away a year ago, is created together with the Collège des Ingénieurs.
by Nicolo Caruso, Davide Centin, Alessandro Chionne and Jonathan Di Paola they imagined a way to exploit the existing infrastructure, therefore without generating new land consumption, to offer a service in peripheral areas while reducing the use of the car. They focused on the historic railway, the Avellino-Rocchetta Sant’Antonio which unites Campania and Puglia: the idea is a train of doctors which, through fixed stops with a weekly programme, reaches the local population with medical services provided directly on board of the train. the project will be presented at an event in the presence of managers of international companies working on the construction of the cross-border section of the Turin-Lyon.
«The projects presented during the summer school – underlines the deputy general director of Telt, Manuela Rocca – they went beyond our expectations: the kids demonstrated that they understood that designing also means thinking outside the box, combining concreteness and creativity. And this is the legacy of the architect Virano that we would also like to pass on to the new generations.”
Pietro Mitrione, the soul of InLocoMotivi, who has been working for years to repurpose the track, says he is enthusiastic about this initiative. And thanks to him and the association, the historic route has been set in motion. Now the Avellino-Rocchetta Sant’Antonio is a point of reference for the Fondazione di Ferrovie dello Stato. “This project too – Mitrione emphasizes – shows that we were right, when years ago we tried not to let this reality die. Ours was not madness, but the awareness that the route can and must be reactivated, even as a traditional transport. This new and interesting idea is further confirmation of this”.
Mitrione pushes for other initiatives. «We can immediately organize educational trains to make our territory known, hidden corners of Irpinia that can only be discovered on board the train. An opportunity to tell the younger generations that the province holds a series of treasures.” The projects presented at the Telt summer school were all innovative, in addition to the “Doctor Train”, which won over all.
The other teams proposed a plan to encourage the use of the railway between Turin and Milan, while producing clean energy, an innovative suit with real time alert sensors for the protection of underground workers and a robot for purifying the air from PM10 in urban construction site areas. Over the course of two weeks, the twenty participants, young people under 30 with different backgrounds (engineering, international & political sciences, architecture), developed their solutions through a design thinking process: starting from a specific problem proposed, they carried out research depth on the topic, they moved on to the creation of various solutions, arriving at the final project through validation steps with the direct support of the experts of the College des Ingénieurs team, on the innovation side, and of Telt, on the infrastructure side. At the same time, the children participated in lessons given by experts, teachers and professionals from different sectors on key topics related to the development of large infrastructures.
