By rosebell
While completing the digging process on two tunnels on the high-speed Naples-Bari railway line, the breakthrough of the final diaphragm of the Telese Tunnel links the two excavation fronts of the 3km tunnel. Doubling and speeding up an 11km stretch of the line, along with the construction of two new stops at Amorosi and Telese, are the intended works on the Frasso Telesino–Telese section. Completing the works for Rete Ferroviaria Italiana was up to ATI consortium, comprising Ghella, Pizzarotti, Itinera, Salcef, and EDS Infrastrutture.
Also, as the first breakthrough of the seven tunnels on the Telese–San Lorenzo Maggiore–Vitulano section, excavation has been completed on the 150m-long Reventa Tunnel. This part of the project the Telese Consortium of Ghella, Itinera, Salcef, and Coget Impianti is doubling and upgrading a 19km stretch of the historic line and the construction of three new stops at Solopaca, San Lorenzo, and Ponte Casalduni.
With almost €6bn value the new Naples–Bari high speed/high-capacity line is one of FS Group’s strategic projects to improve mobility in southern Italy. The date of operating first section, Bovino–Cervaro was 2017. The project will speed up connections between the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic coasts, improving links between Puglia and inland areas of Campania with the Naples–Rome–Milan high-speed backbone.
As part of the European TEN-T Scandinavian–Mediterranean Corridor, through the Cancello–Frasso Telesino section, direct travel from Bari to Naples is due to take just two hours and 40 minutes. Once the entire line is completed, travel times will be reduced to two hours from Bari to Naples, three hours to Rome, and four hours from Lecce and Taranto to the capital.
