BRESCIA

As winter has been long and grey back home and I felt that this might be one of the last chances in Europe to see a completely new metro system open (the next should be in Thessaloniki and maybe in 10-15 years in Dublin...), I made a quick decision and got an affordable flight ticket to Bergamo to visit Brescia's metro on its opening weekend. A good and bad decision.

 

The metro opened its doors for the general public on time, at 16 hours on Saturday 2 March 2013. Well, a few months after its scheduled opening, but once a definitive date had been announced a few weeks ago (still waiting for the final approvals, though), all was prepared for a big party. And it seemed that all of the city's 190,000 inhabitants plus those from the surrounding region came in to try the metro on its first two days when rides were free. So actually getting on the train was quite difficult, at some stations in the central area even getting into the stations, as these were blocked to avoid overcrowding. Service seemed to be more frequent on Saturday, while on Sunday trains ran every 10 minutes only, which is probably o.k. for a normal Sunday, but not today. Sometimes there were some disruptions, defective doors or other failures, which caused some delays, but all in all the metro seemed to prove it works, and probably it won't be put to the same test for a long time.

Considering that this is not really a big city which would normally have a metro, Brescia can now be proud of what they have achieved. Together with Rennes and Lausanne, it is among the smallest metro cities, and they all have driverless metros. The system chosen here is the same found in Copenhagen, where it has been working fine since 2000 (after many teething problems in its early years), and also in Milan where line M5 opened only some weeks ago (which I will visit on Wednesday). Compared to the VAL system in Rennes, or closer from here in Turin, the Ansaldo system has the big advantage that trains are 2.65 m wide which makes them much more spacious and thus much more pleasant to ride that the VAL trains just over 2 m wide. The Alstom system in Lausanne is similar in width. The Ansaldo trains run on normal steel rails, which are laid correctly, i.e. with the necessary superelevation in curves (not like the Canada Line in Vancouver!) and trains ride quite smoothly except for a few abrupt slowdowns, which may require some fine-tuning still. The biggest problem in operation seems to be the excessive station dwelling time. I don't know whether this was chosen on purpose for this busy weekend or whether this will be the standard. It was now around a full minute, when 20 seconds is normal in standard stations, and 30-40 seconds in very busy stations like interchanges. If this is different during normal operation please write a comment, thanks. At the two termini, trains switch to the departure track when they enter the station so they can leave immediately (in fact, with some delays accumulated at Sant'Eufemia they seemed to depart quicker in the reverse direction than they did in normal stations!).

 

The stations are huge and small at the same time. Although the trains runs deep beneath the city centre in a tube tunnel, all underground stations were built by cut-and-cover which results in large impressive spaces, especially those where several beams that hold the side walls were incorporated into the design and which have one of those side walls clad in black metal sheets. But basically in all underground stations the actual platform area feels too small and narrow, most so at Vittoria which, right in the heart of city, will become the busiest station on the system. Being so small, there are no benches to sit down while you wait. And being laid out for 3-car trains only, the stations are quite short anyway (about 50 m). Unlike in Turin, there is no art whatsoever exposed anywhere, so the stations look a bit austere. So at the end of the day I thought, the stations are o.k. (I expect the M5 stations in Milan to be rather dull, but who knows, may be surprised), and some are very impressive when you enter the main hall, but they could have been more exciting – so Naples has no reason to fear that they will lose their number 1 position in Italian metro design.

 

The Brescia Metro doesn't actually have a colour to give it some identity, maybe it's blue, but that's not properly defined. Outside some stations in the central area, there is already a logo post in blue, and the logo as such is also blue. Inside the stations, the name is written in blue letters on the white walls. Anyway, I don't like their logo, and I think it was a bad decision not to use the standard metro logo used everywhere else in Italy, i.e. the white M on a red square, which, like the German U on a blue background, is known by everyone, while this is a local logo that not even visitors from Italy will recognise as a metro entrance. Unfortunately, smaller cities tend to be different for the sake of it.

Despite a delay of several months in opening the metro, the areas around most stations were not finished now, maybe due to winter time, and as mentioned before, the logo post was rather an exception at Stazione FS, Vittoria and Ospedale (maybe some more station). The metro station at Stazione FS (Railway Station) is actually not at the railway station, but some 100-200 m further east and as of now, you have to guess where it is as inside the railway station there is no hint, and once outside you can't really see it as it is hidden behind a high and ugly building. Vittoria station is close to the main shopping street and all the major squares in the city centre, so that's really the most central stop. San Faustino is at the northern fringes of the older part of the city. Apparently there were early plans for another station at Gramsci between Stazione FS and Vittoria, probably quite useful, as the stretch between the two is rather long, and this would have taken some burdon off Vittoria.

 

 

 

I'm sure that this metro will be well-used as it runs through quite densely built-up areas, except for the southern stretch from Poliambulanza to the terminus, which cuts through some undeveloped land but there may be some construction following soon. In fact, a new housing estate has already been built around Sanpolino station, the only elevated station in a residential area. The terminus Sant'Eufemia-Buffalora is also elevated but surrounded by commercial and industrial sites. Between Poliambulanza and San Polo Parco, the trains run at grade, with the first station lying below grade, though, and accessible at both ends, while the latter actually lies at grade and is accessible from the sides, so to get to the other platform, passengers need to take an underpass, embedded into a still-to-be-covered-with-plants kind of amphitheatre. Only Poliambulanza and the two elevated stations at the end of the line have island platforms. This is mostly determined by the two-track tube tunnel which like on line 14 in Paris require side platforms. Like in Paris, the track area is roofed over inside the stations, which together with the platform screen doors helps to reduce noise inside the stations. Most stations have skylights which allow daylight to fall into the stations.

On the trains, there are acoustic and visual announcements. Accoustically, the next station is announced twice [prossima fermata – Vittoria; treno in arrivo a – Vittoria … if I recall correctly]. For doors closing there is a permanent, rather excessive peep while the doors are open (which is too long anyway) and then a bit quicker when they close. When they are almost closed, the lady says 'porte in chiusa' (doors closing). On the platforms, mostly the waiting time for the next three trains is shown, which is rather excessive, the next two would be enough and would fit on one display; with three, the display switches all the time, and passengers may be shocked if at their first look they see '20 min', when the next train is actually in '10 min'. No-one except a photographing metro enthusiast is interested in the third train coming... to know when the second is arriving may be good to know in case the first to pass is completely full, so it helps to decide whether to squeeze in or let it go and wait for the next one. The third one may reveal that service is running very irregularly. On the platforms, the entering trains is also announced accoustically. Other information is rather scarce. They put up an ugly line map including all buses and the forthcoming changes to the bus map. But that's about it. There are no station area maps, now a standard on metro systems. There are ticket machines which have five languages, but as usual, badly translated – Spanish and German speaking visitors have to know French! to understand their versions as 'trip' is translated as 'voyage'... The different ticket options are not explained in any of the different language versions, so you need to guess what '24 ore' means if you don't speak Italian. And a '24 ore' ticket is only 3.40 EUR, so a German visitor may not even believe that 'ore' means 'Stunden' with this low fare! So, the customer information part has room for improvement. Otherwise, signage is o.k. Maybe the pictograms are not clear enough as at one station people asked me whether there was a lift also in this station, and I said, it is right there, but they didn't see it – the problem is that although stations are very transparent and also the lift houses on the surface, the lift doors on the platform are not made of glass but of aluminium – I don't know why, but generally all lifts in public places nowadays are transparent for safety reasons. People will probably use the lifts a lot, because in many stations there are no escalators, especially those at low depth, but like in Copenhagen, the stairs seem too steep. The very deep stations generally have escalators from the platforms to the lower mezzanine, and from there to the upper mezzanine, but not from there to the surface, which is often still a steep flight of stairs. Interestingly, Vittoria, the busiest station on the line, has no escalators from the platform to the mezzanine, although their are two sets of stairs, the same is true for San Faustino, so this may lead to overcrowding on stairwells. The advantage of escalators is also that they separate up and down passenger flows.

It is pretty difficult to get a good shot of the train as it is either hidden behind platform screen doors or a small-mesh fence.

 

The initial plans included a western branch south of the railway station. I don't know what the situation of this project is now, it may depend on the success of the initial line. In the tunnel I couldn't spot any visible sign for an already built junction. Logically, it would have to diverge south of Bresciadue station.

 

LINKS

 

Brescia Metro at UrbanRail.Net

 

Brescia Metro (Official Site)