The President of the Council of Ministers, Paolo Gentiloni, has opened the new Napoli Afragola station, designed by star architect Zaha Hadid.
The new station will begin first-phase operations on Sunday 11 June and will welcome 36 high speed trains every day.
The premier arrived at the new stop on board a Frecciarossa 1000, together with the Infrastructure and Transport Minister Graziano Delrio, the President of FS Italiane, Gioia Ghezzi and company CEO Renato Mazzoncini. Welcoming them to the new station were the President of the Campania Region Vincenzo De Luca, the Mayor of Afragola Domenico Tuccillo, with Claudia Cattani and Maurizio Gentile, CEO and President of Rete Ferroviaria Italiana respectively, and Riccardo Maria Monti and Carlo Carganico, President and CEO of Italferr.
The new station, which was designed by Zaha Hadid, will receive 18 pairs of high speed trains each day. From Sunday 11 June these will link the new stop with all the main cities on the Turin – Salerno backbone, as well as with Venice and Reggio Calabria. Napoli Afragola will add to the services from Napoli Centrale: 32 trains out of 36 will stop in both stations, since although the user areas served by each are complementary, they are also different. Just 55 minutes will be needed to reach Roma Termini station, while the journey time between Napoli Centrale station and the Italian capital will be unchanged at one hour and ten minutes.
The new stop will become, with the activation of the second phase, the interconnection hub between the high speed Turin – Salerno line, the new Naples – Bari line, the Circumvesuviana local service and the regional trains to and from Caserta, Benevento and north Naples. All of which favours intermodality. Afragola station will also have 1,400 parking spaces, with 500 already available from 11 June. When fully functional, the new hub will serve an urban user base of around three million people. The activation of the second phase is scheduled for 2022.
The station is a strategic point in the regional and national transport system and is a splendid building to be admired for its architectural beauty. It is also a real chance to redesign and repurpose the surrounding area. Zaha Hadid’s project for the new Napoli Afragola station really meets FS Italiane’s engineering and architectural needs, and offers a completely innovative interpretation: creating infrastructure that can be a catalysing element and a symbol of a change in direction of a heavily urbanised area like the north of Naples.
The central body of the station is 400 metres long and crosses the tracks like a large bridge, with 30,000 square metres laid out over four levels. The investment in the tender process for this first phase is 60 million euros.
With Napoli Afragola station, FS Italiane confirms its position as the main promoter of quality modern architecture in Italy. The Napoli Afragola project followed an international competition which was launched in 2003, with which the FS Italiane Group relaunched, after over 50 years, the idea of great architecture in a railway context. This has always been considered a fundamental part of city structure, and which has led to the building of innovative stations like Torino Porta Susa, Roma Tiburtina, Bologna Centrale AV and Reggio Emilia AV Mediopadana.
(Source: FS)
