Milan, 8 April 2022
Presented in Milan, the Parkin’ Station – a parking and modal interchange area, able to accommodate up to 425 vehicles – has been developed by the FS Italiane Group company of Grandi Stazioni Rail and co-financed by MIMS (Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility), with a total investment of approximately 15 million euro.
The presentation was attended by Attilio Fontana, President of the Lombardy Region, Giuseppe Sala, Mayor of Milan, and Vera Fiorani, CEO of Rete Ferroviaria Italiana.
Parkin’ Station is a new infrastructure which, after Milan, will be reproduced also in the railway stations of Roma Termini and Napoli Centrale. These form the components of a strategic plan to transform the stations along the main national railway lines into intermodal hubs of a MaaS (Mobility as a Service) system, with spaces for parking vehicles and areas for services for the exchange of green means of transport such as trains, soft mobility vehicles and collective local public transport. The result is a multi-service transport corridor in which stations take on a strategic role within an integrated and modern mobility system, one with fewer private vehicles, more shared mobility and intersections with the local public transport, seeing stations at the centre of continuous pedestrian routes, connected to cycle networks and offering bicycle parking, equipped with charging points for electric vehicles, including spaces dedicated to the pick-up and drop-off of shared vehicles.
In Milan, by the first half of 2022, a pedestrian link is also planned between the “CM7” and Milano Centrale Station, on the railway platform serving tracks 11 and 12.
As part of the redevelopment of real estate no longer being utilised for railway activities, the former CM7 warehouse – a large volume that had been unused for some time – was transformed into the Parkin’ Station area, intended as a hub for shared mobility services for station users and to serve the city of Milano Centrale. In 1931, the year the station was inaugurated, this space was used to handle freight wagons. The entire area has sadly gone down in history as the place where thousands of Jews were gathered and deported to concentration camps between 1943 and 1945, crammed into convoys departing from Platform 21. Indeed, one area has long since been transformed into a place of remembrance, with the construction of the neighbouring Holocaust Museum, inaugurated in 2013.
The project behind the Parkin’ Station intermodal hub was intended as a nod to the original function of these spaces, with the preservation of the overhead crane used for the horizontal and vertical shifting of the freight train engines now serving as a piece of industrial archaeology.
The Parkin’ Station will help promote and improve the multimodal hub functions that Milano Centrale station is already fulfilling. In fact, the multimodal service centre, which covers an area of 24,000 square metres, will be able to accommodate up to 425 vehicles, 10 of which will be reserved for persons with reduced mobility, plus 6 dedicated “pink” parking spaces at the entrances and exits on Via Ferrante Aporti and Via Sammartini. One essential aspect is the provision of areas dedicated to shared mobility services, such as car sharing and spaces for car rental companies, to complement the other differentiated forms of services connected to parking on the basis of hourly, daily or monthly use formulas, bookable in advance through the Parkin’ Station app.
The parking service eases mobility in the vicinity of the station, with 9 charging posts for 18 electric vehicles already operational, making it one of the largest charging hubs in Milan’s city centre. In the future, more stations will be added to bring the number of electric vehicles up to at least 50. Some of the charging infrastructure will be for the exclusive use of car sharing services operating with electric vehicles in the city of Milan.
The Parkin’ Station is open from five in the morning to one in the morning, with the possibility of hourly, daily and monthly rates.
It will be possible to book parking spaces through the parkinstation.it website or the Parkin’ Station app, planning your journey in advance. With a view to integrating train tickets and services, it will also be possible to book parking spaces whilst purchasing train tickets.