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After France, it’s time for Spain. The Frecciarossa 1000, the flagship of the Trenitalia (FS Italiane Group) fleet, is heading straight to Madrid, where it will challenge the hosts of Renfe and the French of Sncf, who have already been active in Spain for some time, on the Iberian high-speed lines. In these hours, the Frecciarossa test runs begin on the Madrid-Barcelona railway line, the last phase before the final approval of the train. This will allow iryo, the brand Trenitalia will travel to Spain with, to offer passengers a new high-speed service until 2022, with ticket sales scheduled to start between September and October.
The first step in France
When a good day starts in the morning, or from the December 2021 debut of the Frecciarossa in France, operations that have so far exceeded the most optimistic passenger traffic expectations on the international route Milan-Turin-Lyon-Paris and the internal route Paris- Lyon, then Trenitalia’s landing in Spain could bring a lot of joy to the FS Group. Exporting to Europe the Italian high-speed model, refined over years of competition with Italo, is one of FS’s strategic goals. It is not for nothing that the FS top management speaks more and more often about the company as a “multidomestic company”.
The start in Spain
The project launched by Trenitalia in Spain has the ambition to encourage more and more people to choose the train for their travels, in line with European goals in terms of sustainability. Iryo will initially unite Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, Cordoba, Valencia, Alicante and Zaragoza, and then expand to other cities. The convoy that will carry out the technical tests is one of the 20 new Frecciarossa 1000 built by Hitachi in the Italian plants (the most important is that of Pistoia) with the same characteristics as those circulating in Italy. The train is almost entirely recyclable and allows for a reduction of 80% of carbon dioxide per passenger per route, and for these reasons has received the environmental certificate.
