Palermo, 29 April 2015
Palermo - Catania by train in under three hours. Fourteen scheduled journeys a day, seven each way, with one train running every two hours. An overall number of over two thousand seats offered every day – just 300 seats until twenty days ago – will ensure a comfortable and safe journey on Trenitalia Minuetto trains. One-way adult tickets cost €12.50.
This is the prompt reply to problems with mobility deriving from interruption of the A19 motorway from FS Italiane and Sicily Regional Authority.
The new rail connections between Palermo and Catania will become effective on 3 May and could become a fully-fledged watershed, inaugurating a new season in public transport for the island. In fact, these are the first tangible results of work that commenced several months ago that aim to re-organise rail travel in Sicily and thereby make it more suited to the different needs of passengers, with regular and widespread journeys around town centres and rapid connections between main cities.
This is an efficient model that Trenitalia, as technical partner as well as service manager, is proposing to the relative Regional Authorities. The collapse of the A19 flyover became the input for ensuring that this model was effectively applied along the Palermo – Catania line, therefore ensuring an immediate benefit not only for these two cities, but also for Termini Imerese, Caltanissetta and Enna.
This new timetable, which Sicily Regional Authority approved as organiser, will also involve the other railway lines in Sicily when the December timetable becomes effective.
Increasing scheduled routes to 14 a day along the Palermo - Catania line follows the first prompt provision entailing two additional services with respect to the two scheduled services implemented on 13 April. Since then, the number of passengers travelling by train has constantly and greatly increased.