Passengers on an Italian high-speed train were stranded last week after it left almost an hour early – so it could arrive on time, the train operator acknowledged on Monday.
Rome’s Termini station was packed last Friday with travelers worried about the impact of a national transport strike that brought local buses, trams and the metro to a standstill.
Fortunately, Trenitalia’s high-speed “Silver Arrow” line to Genoa, in northwestern Italy, was in operation and scheduled to depart at 4:20 p.m.
But when it was time to board, dozens of passengers searched in vain for the train on the departure board, only to find that it had left at 3:30 p.m.
The train had to take a slower route due to maintenance on the usual route, the rail operator explains. But arriving on time meant leaving 50 minutes early.
A journalist from the daily newspaper La Stampa was among the passengers who did not receive a message on their mobile phone informing them of the timetable change.
The newspaper reported that the train had left the station half empty.
Trenitalia insisted that only a “small number” of passengers had not received the warning.
Anyway, “the statistics are okay: one train late, one train more on time (if not an early one),” wrote La Stampa.
A Trenitalia spokesperson told AFP that passengers who missed the train could catch the next one at 4.57pm or claim a refund.
Trenitalia said its medium and long-distance lines recorded average delays of around nine minutes in 2023. This figure was two minutes for regional trains and around seven minutes for international connections.
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