The company owned by Naples Municipality manages a heavy metropolitan railway, a light one and four funicular railways, and the network is still expanding.
There is a very close relationship between Naples and the railway. It was here that, on 3 October 1839, the first railway in Italy, 7.5 km long from Naples to Portici, was opened. It is no surprise, then, that the city and its metropolitan area are served by a large number of railway and tramway lines as well as several funicular railways. Metronapoli Spa is the Naples Municipality company that manages part of this system: the heavy metropolitan railway, which in the urban transport system is identified as Line 1, the light metropolitan railway in the process of completion which corresponds to Line 6, and four funicular railways, of extreme importance for public transport in a city that is located on the sea but that extends above all up into the hills and has the slopes of Vesuvius as its backdrop. We met Metronapoli Spa’s Sole Administrator, Mr Alberto Ramaglia, engineer, and its Operations Manager Vincenzo Orazzo, also an engineer, who illustrated for us in detail the present and future situation of the company and led us to discover some unique features of their network, starting from the “Stazioni dell’Arte” (“Stations of Art”), an initiative with which they have revolutionised in a positive way the exploitation of the stations of the metropolitan system.
Railway Engineering: Mr. Ramaglia, let’s start with a description of what Metronapoli is and what it does. When was the company created and who controls it?
Alberto Ramaglia: Metronapoli Spa today is the company that manages Line 1 and Line 6 of the metropolitan railway network and the four city funicular railways for Naples Municipality, which controls it through Napoli Holding, one of its own subsidiaries.
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