Metropolitana di Torino
The Metropolitana di Torino is the metro of the Italian city of Turin, as well as the country's first driverless metro. It is based on the VAL system and was opened for the 2006 Winter Olympics .
route
The completely underground route is currently 13.2 km long, initially leading from the suburb of Collegno right into the city center and ending at Lingotto train station. The route begins at the workshop on the site of the former Collegno airfield. A few hundred meters further is the western terminus Fermi with a large park-and-ride facility. Corso Francia is reached at the next station Paradiso on the city limits to Turin . The subway follows this multi-lane arterial road almost to the city center. After the Principi d'Acaja station, there is a tight 120 ° curve and the route reaches the XVIII Dicembre station under the Corso San Martino street . After crossing under the Porta Susa train station, under which a new subway station is to be opened after its new construction, the route swings under Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and leads to Porta Nuova train station in Piazza Carlo Felice . From there it goes via five intermediate stations to the current Lingotto terminus.
The stations, which are on average 16 m below the surface of the earth, are kept in a very uniform style; each station is 60 meters long and 19 meters wide. Only the stations under the main train stations Porta Nuova and Porta Susa will be more spacious. The stations were designed by Bernhard Kohn & Associés. The artistic design elements relate to the immediate surroundings, such as B. historical events, sights or personalities after whom the stations are named. An important feature are the glass walls with sliding doors between the platforms and the lanes of the vehicles. Thanks to the automatic operation, the trains are driven in precisely so that the doors of the station and the train open and close synchronously.
While the section tunnel with a diameter of 7.8 meters was dug by a tunnel boring machine , the stations were built using the top-down method . This means that the walls in the shell were first created using special civil engineering techniques, on which a cover was placed. In this way, the road surface could be restored relatively quickly, while the actual excavation and the full expansion only took place under the existing cover.
Technology and operation
Technically, the Turin Metro is the exact equivalent of Métro Lille , the first metro network to use the VAL system. All dimensions and sizes were adopted 1: 1. The trains with a total length of 52 m are composed of two train units. Each of these units consists of two single wagons that are 13 m long, 2.08 m wide and 14 t in weight. A train holds a maximum of 440 people.
The wagons have two axles with two rubber wheels each and four horizontally arranged wheels with rubber tires. The latter exert pressure on the guide rail and thus guide the carriage. Inside each of the rubber wheels there is an additional tire to prevent deformation in the event of damage. This ensures that, in the event of an incident, the vehicles can at least drive to the next stop. The fully automatically operated, i.e. H. Driverless trains centrally from the operations control center in the operations workshop at the western end of the line. Both the trains and the automation technology were supplied by Siemens AG .
The Turin metro runs every four to six minutes during the day and every two minutes during rush hour . Operating hours are Monday to Thursday between 6 a.m. and midnight, Friday and Saturday 6 a.m. to 1:30 a.m., and Sundays 8 a.m. to midnight.
history
In 1936 there were plans for the first time to build a subway. A test tunnel 300 m long was built in Via Roma, but the project was abandoned. In 1960 there were considerations to build a seven kilometer long tunnel in the city center in which the tram should run; this project was also filed.
The reason why Turin, unlike Rome and Milan, did not manage to push through the construction of a subway for a long time was mainly due to the fact that the necessary funds could not be raised by law or subsidies. Although the planned Fermi - Porta Nuova line was recognized as eligible for funding in November 1995, the government's 35% funding rate did not meet expectations. Nevertheless, detailed planning began in 1998. Finally, in April 1999, the funding rate was increased to 60%.
Finally, the construction work began on December 19, 2000 in Collegno, a total of three tunnel boring machines were used. The shell was completed on March 18, 2005 . Four months earlier, after the delivery of the first train on November 10, 2004, the first test drives had already taken place on a short section at the workshop. The official opening of the first section between Fermi and XVIII Dicembre took place on February 4, 2006 , six days before the start of the Winter Olympics.
The second part of the first phase of the metro expansion was completed on October 5, 2007. With the opening of three more stations ( Vinzaglio , Re Umberto and Porta Nuova ) the length of the route grew to 9.6 km; the journey from Fermi train station to Porta Nuova now takes 15 minutes. At the same time, the Turin city administration had an underground station prepared under the long-distance and regional train station Porta Susa , the metro will only stop there once it has been reconstructed.
On March 6, 2011, the extension from Porta Nuova station to Lingotto station went into operation with a total of six new underground stations. The length of the route grew to 13.2 km. The subway station at Porta Susa train station opened on September 9, 2011.
Expansion and planning
The metro will be extended by 1.6 km from Lingotto to Benghazi in the south . The line should go into operation at the end of 2015 and have the intermediate station Italia '61 . An extension to the west from Fermi train station to the more distant suburb of Rivoli is being planned. The financing questions for this expansion are still pending.
In October 2015, the Piedmontese government also put out a competition for the construction of the Linea M2 . It is supposed to drive through the city for about 15 km, coming from the south-west, towards the north. One of the 22 stations will be Porta Nuova central station , which will become a transfer station for both lines.
swell
- ↑ Press release Success story of Italy's first fully automated metro continues from Siemens Transportations Systems, innovations-report.de, October 5, 2007
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from September 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Turin Val is longer . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International . No. 4 , 2013, p. 191 .
- ↑ Information on the further construction process on metrotorino.it ( Memento from June 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ VIA AL BANDO DI GARA PER LA PROGETTAZIONE DELLA LINEA 2 DELLA METRO TORINESE. (No longer available online.) Città die Torino - Ufficio Stampa, October 20, 2015, archived from the original on December 22, 2015 ; Retrieved December 19, 2015 (Italian). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Andrea Rossi: Parte il progetto della linea 2. La Stampa, December 31, 2014, accessed December 19, 2015 (Italian).
See also
Web links
- Official website of the operator (Italian / English)
- Metro Turin at urbanrail.net
