Start of excavation of the Florence HS Rail Link

On Wednesday, 26 July 2023, excavation work began on the Florence HS rail link that will involve the city's railway underpass and the new Florence Belfiore HS station.

Italferr, the engineering company of the FS Group's Infrastructure Hub, was assigned the Works Supervision activities for the strategic excavation of two tunnels at a depth of approximately 20 metres and for a total length of over 8 km.

The intervention, amounting to over € 45 million and involving Italferr specialists and technicians, represents an infrastructural element of strategic importance that is indispensable for the completion of the Milan-Naples high-speed backbone and therefore for the development of the country's infrastructure.

The work, in fact, will significantly increase the capacity of the surface network to the benefit of local traffic and will allow a separation of flows between regional and high-speed trains, bringing enormous benefits to local and metropolitan mobility as well as to people, economic activities and tourism.

Thanks to the integration and enhancement of different modes of transport in the urban area, the new Firenze Belfiore HS station will be easily connected to the central railway station of Firenze Santa Maria Novella.

The excavation will lead to the overall production of approximately 1,670,800 cubic metres of excavated materials, of which 1,350,000 cubic metres will be delivered to the S. Barbara mining area and reused in a sustainable manner for the construction of the so-called 'Screen Hill' in the Enel area.

This project is part of the 'Cantieri Parlanti' initiative, implemented by the FS Group with the infrastructure hub companies RFI and Italferr, in cooperation with the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, to allow dialogue with the local community and to provide a transparent account of the work's activities and purpose.