The Marconi Express is a

monorail A monorail (from " mono", meaning "one", and " rail") is a railway in which the track consists of a single rail or a beam. Colloquially, the term "monorail" is often used to describe any form of elevated rail or people mover. More accura ...

line in

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language, Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 1 ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. At in length, it links Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport to

Bologna Centrale railway station Bologna Centrale is a railway station in Bologna, Italy. The station is situated at the northern edge of the city centre. It is located at the southern end of the Milan-Bologna high-speed line, which opened on 13 December 2008, and the northern ...

, with an intermediate station and depot at Lazzaretto and a travel time of 7 minutes and 20 seconds. The monorail trains have been provided by

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Transportation. The three trainsets are each capable of carrying up to 48 passengers. The coordinated design of the infrastructure was carried out by the engineering companies MATE Engineering and STS of Bologna, while the architectural design is by

Massimo Iosa Ghini Massimo Iosa Ghini (born 18 June 1959) is an Italian architect, designer and professor known for pioneering the Bolidist Movement, and for his involvement with the Memphis Group featuring others architects including Ettore Sottsass, Michae ...

. Building works were completed in 2018 and the line was scheduled to start operating on 7 March 2020. However, the date of inauguration was subsequently postponed. The line has been open to public service since 18 November 2020. However, soon after its inauguration, the service started suffering significant disruptions, culminating in its suspension between November 2021 and February 2022, with surreptitious substitution via normal buses, despite oblivious customers paying the full fare for a service they never received. As of February 2022, the issues persist, and normal buses are still integrating the service. The three trainsets currently operating on Marconi Express can transport a maximum of 576

passengers per hour per direction Passengers per hour per direction (p/h/d), passengers per hour in peak direction (pphpd) or corridor capacity is a measure of the route capacity of a rapid transit or public transport system. Definition The corridor capacity in the passenger tr ...

. The design of the infrastructure allows for up to four trainsets to operate on the line at the same time.https://www.marconiexpress.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Marconi-Express-in-sintesi.pdf

Route

The system consists of an elevated monorail, supported by 125 pre-made concrete pylons, 5,2 to 18 meters high, 35–40 meters apart from each other. The monorail overpasses

Autostrada A14 The A14 "''Adriatic''" is the second-longest Italian motorway. Its northern end is Bologna (on the bypass with the "Tyrrhenian" A1) and its southern ending is at Taranto, bordering the Adriatic coast and unifying historical local roads. Inaugura ...

and Tangenziale di Bologna with a 90–100 meters-long, single-span bridge. It also overpasses the

Reno river The Reno () is a river of Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy. It is the tenth longest river in Italy (the sixth longest of those that flow directly into the sea) and the most important of the region apart from the Po. It has a drainage basin of about ...

and the Padua–Bologna railway, while it overpasses the high speed railway link from the Padua-Bologna railway to Bologna's underground high speed railway station. The route starts from

, where the former platforms 12-15 were located, next to via dei Carracci; after 5.095 km it reaches the opposite terminus, at Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport. The total travel time is about 7 minutes and 20 seconds, while the former Aerobus shuttle bus required 18–23 minutes. The intermediate station of Lazzaretto is double tracked, allowing cars traveling to opposite directions to cross each other. The Lazzaretto station also acts as a warehouse-workshop and centralized command post. In the immediate vicinities of such station, there are the Trenitalia Regional Directorate for Emilia-Romagna and the "Deposito Locomotive Bologna Centrale", one of the two railway maintenance depots in Bologna, alongside Bologna Ravone. Contrary to the other Italian people movers, which are cableways (horizontal funicular), the one in Bologna is powered by a 750 V

direct current Direct current (DC) is one-directional flow of electric charge. An electrochemical cell is a prime example of DC power. Direct current may flow through a conductor such as a wire, but can also flow through semiconductors, insulators, or eve ...

(converters are supplied by the multinational ABB); this is the same voltage as trolleybuses in Bologna, as well as the projected trams in Bologna.

Stations

The three stations (Aeroporto, Lazzaretto and Bologna Centrale) are equipped with lifts and escalators. The access route has no steps, and the route from Bologna Centrale station to the Marconi airport terminal is fully sheltered. All three stations are protected by entrance and exit turnstiles. There are automatic ticket machines in the stations. It is also possible to open the turnstiles directly by contactless card (Pay & Go mode): the system charges the correct rate based on the entrance and exit turnstiles, allowing passengers to automatically take advantage of the return rate if the return journey takes place within 30 days, or the reduced rate if only traveling on the Bologna Centrale to Lazzaretto stretch.

Service

The service runs daily from 5:40 to midnight. Trains run every 15 minutes, or every 7:30 minutes at peak times. When service is interrupted, TPER operates a bus replacement service from

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calling at Lazzaretto. The buses used for this service are those previously used for the BLQ route and currently used on route 945, and are recognizable due to them adopting the "MEX" code.

Trainsets

The Marconi Express trainsets are bidirectional and consist of two separate wagons each. Each shuttle can carry up to 48 passengershttps://www.marconiexpress.it/regolazione-covid-19/ and can reach a top speed of 70 km/h. In the first weeks of operation of the Marconi Express, due to regulations linked to the

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, the capacity of each trainset has been reduced to 50%, providing for a capacity of 24 passengers per trainset (12 passengers per wagon). Trainsets are equipped with onboard monitors and free WiFi.

References

External links