ITALY: The launch of domestic high speed rail services within Italy will support plans for French national passenger operator SNCF Voyageurs to grow foreign activities from 22% of its business in 2024 to 30% in 2030, CEO Christophe Fanichet said at the restart of Paris – Milano services.
The company’s local subsidiary SNCF Voyageurs Italia has applied to Italian infrastructure manager RFI to run three sets of trains. These would comprise two daily Paris – Milano return trips, one less than at present because the TGV M trains will offer a higher capacity than the existing TGV Réseau PLT sets, as well as four Torino – Venezia return trips and nine trains between Torino and Napoli.
The services would be launched in stages to eventually total 10 million seats/year, with a target of gaining a 15% market share.
The services would be operated using 15 TGV M trainsets on order from Alstom.
Commercial and technical details of the operations including the maintenance arrangements have not yet been announced, but the ambition is for SVI to be an Italian service with Italian staff.
A 2027 launch is envisaged, although there are still difficulties to overcome. The capacity allocation agreement signed with RFI for the first stage of development covers only 30% of what SVI has requested, and a second agreement only 15%.
RFI has blamed this on a lack of capacity and grandfather rights. However, competition authority AGCM has started an inquiry into FS Group and RFI to investigate a suspected abuse of dominant position
On March 21 AGCM said access to the network and, as a consequence, entry into the high speed passenger market by SNCF Voyages Italia ‘appears to have been slowed down, and in some cases hindered’ by RFI which it alleges has ’implemented an exclusionary strategy by engaging in various practices related to the allocation of infrastructure capacity’.
