Italy Travel Answers

Please excuse the "NVT" in the first heading...I can't seem to type "NTV"...I caught "NVT" in several places, but not the heading :-0 Isn't it funny how some abbreviations just aren't natural (to you, that is, I am sure this is different for different people)? Bill

Hi Bill What a pity that I did not know this a week ago! I booked high speed trains (Milan-to Florence, Florerence-Rome- Rome-Venice) on another website- have had conformation & vouchers back already........ Do you know if this new line stops at any other cities? We are looking for a line from Venice back to Milan at the end of our holiday. Thanks

I saw some press on those, Bill, but it was still a very new service when we were looking at train routes/prices last month. Their website has some issues: schedule page load is painfully slow. Haven't really looked at ticket prices - are they much higher than than comparable Trenitalia trains? Gosh, do you think they run when the other trains go on strike? That would be a real plus for travelers on tight itineraries as long as they were going to the cities served.

I first discovered them when we were researching for our trip to Italy early last month. They were a bit higher priced and as Bill says they are probably going after the business traveller initially.

Lynne, the current NTV routes are Naples (Salerno) up through Rome, Florence, Bologna, then over to Milan and Torino, or Bologna over through Padova to Venice. Trenitalia runs high speed trains (but not the fastest) from Milan to Venice, but not NTV...perhaps because NTV wants to run only the fastest trains, and the Milan to Venice track doesn't support that yet... Bill

Kate, yes the map is really slow...and uses some features that my not terribly out of date browser doesn't support...not good for them. Also, I don't see pricing on the website. Rich, did you see any in your research? Bill

We are already in the future. Trenitalia doesn't run any infrastructure. That is the province of RFI, the Italian equivalent of Network Rail in the UK. Trenitalia itself also starts to behave more and more like a private company. The High Speed network is run for profit. The regional trains are increasingly run under contract for the regions. It's not that different from how it is nowadays in the UK, or Germany or the Netherlands, with the exceptions that the number of new entrants is limited for the moment...

Yes, you are right, I get lazy and treat the FS as a monolith, but it's not...the FS group has all sorts of companies: o Trenitalia o RFI o Italferr o Ferservizi o FS Logistica o FS Sistemi Urbani o Fercredit o Grandi Stazioni o Centostazioni o BUSITALIA – SITA Nord o FS Formazione Well, we'll see if competition for rail passengers leads to better service or worse service ;-) Bill

Not sure, how far is that a blessing - in the theory it is fine, but there is one thing in Italy done much worse than in UK. In UK you may have many passenger rail companies - but all of them will accept the standard international 1-month "open" ticket without a Penny surcharge (except the sleepers, where the surcharge is fixed at 50 Euro / not Pound!/ per bed). In Italy the same kind of ticket is valid on regional trains only. An other Italian speciality are the ridiculous "tracking" fees imposed on foreign companies. In December of 2011 that killed the (Moscow) - Budapest - Venezia service: out of sudden FS wanted to charge at least twice what they do to Trenitalia. This is how the international connections to/from Italy are being killed. An other "nice" trick is to declare some trains (like French TGV) "not compliant with safety", the evil intent in both cases is pretty clear. I do not know, what is the background of FS managers having a pact with Lucifer himself in person, but if there is afterlife, they should think about some fine works of Dante.

Article in CNN today cnn.com/2012/06/22/travel/fe...

Very timely...maybe they were given the idea by VT? ;-) hahaha Bill