As it enters it’s fifth year of publication, Railway Engineering is bringing its readers’ attention to two excellent examples of how Italian know-how and Italy’s potential are bringing about increasingly closer relations between Italy and overseas countries.
This is highlighted in the words of Matteo Triglia, Managing Director of Italferr, which illustrate how Italian railway engineering excellence, in all of its many facets, is admired and sought after overseas and how this can be a competitive advantage for all Italian companies operating in this sector.
In fact, for a number of years now Italferr has been orientated towards an international dimension where it has become a leading engineering company on the international stage. In recent months it has acquired a number of important work orders overseas, strengthening its presence in Middle Eastern countries, an area where huge investments in the railway and metro system sector are expected to be made in the coming years.
Similarly, in the city of Florence we uncover a really successful enterprise, that of Gest S.p.A., the company which is now 100% owned by the French group, RATP, and holds the concession to run the Florence tramway system.
In this cradle of the Renaissance, the T1 tramway line has achieved some amazing results: in terms of ridership, numbers have gone way beyond expectations, and in terms of user satisfaction, 74% of passengers interviewed defined the service as excellent.
This and other future developments linked to the construction of the new T2 and T3 lines were explained to us by Gest’s Chairman, Bruno Lombardi and the Managing Director, Jean-Luc Laugaa.
And that’s not all: our journey into Mexico continues.
This time we have an article which takes a detailed look at a small but really important railroad, the Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepec: approximately 200 km of track which runs between the Mexican ports on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the only railway which the Mexican government decided not to award a concession for.
We spoke to Gustavo Baca Villanueva, General Manager of Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepec, whom we met in the company’s headquarters in Mexico City.
Then we wanted to take a look at urban transport by interviewing Mauricio Trejo, Sales Manager of Ferrocarriles Suburbanos. Of the overall envisaged project covering 242 km, at present a 27-km line is in operation and carries over 150,000 passengers a day on its latest-generation trains.
We have also included a special article dedicated to the metropolitan transport system in Mexico City.
On that note, we have only to wish you an enjoyable read of this issue of Railway Engineering which, as always, is packed with exclusive articles written with our readers in mind.
