Italy's 'White Arrow' High-Speed Train - Frecciabianca First Class Review
Vložit
- čas přidán 29. 03. 2022
- Hello, and welcome back to another train trip report on my channel.
In this video I will be travelling on-board a Trenitalia FS E.402 Frecciabianca train from Ancona to Bologna Centrale.
The Frecciabianca, or White Arrow, is the lowest category of the Italian national operator's high-speed trains. I was interested to see how it compares to their other high-speed trains.
Enjoy the video. :)
#Trenitalia #Frecciabianca #tripreport
---
Journey Details:
Origin: Ancona
Destination: Bologna Centrale
Company: Trenitalia
Train: FS E.402 + Frecciabianca stock
Accommodation: S1
Distance: 126 miles / 203 kilometres
Price: €45.50 (£38.20 / $49.90)
Time: 1h50m + 30L
---
Find me elsewhere:
superalbs.weebly.com/
/ superalbs
/ superalbstravels
/ superalbstravels
It's popular to imagine that Italian trains run late but my experience is to the contrary. In 17 trips to Italy for two to three months each trip in the last ten years, I have taken at least a hundred train trips and probably closer to two hundred all over the country. I haven't kept a diary but I venture to guess that at least 90 percent of the time the trains depart and arrive on time. Probably more like 95 percent. When I get on a train in Italy I expect it to leave and arrive on time and it usually does. There have been a few trips delayed by extraordinary amounts of time, once because of an earthquake, another because of a mechanical breakdown, but they are the exception. I like your channel but please don't play into the stereotype about Italian trains leaving late. It's fun to say so but it isn't the truth.
Hello! I am only making this comment off my personal experience, where all bar two of my long-distance trains were delayed. For a fair balance, I must admit that one was nearly ten minutes early!
Indeed, there is a guy running a website that collects daily statistics from official sources and it's pretty evident that on average about 90-95% of the trains are on-time, both on departure and arrival, and a number of them are even early on arrival. It's in Italian only but the captions are just a few and pretty easy to translate (partenza = departure, arrivo = arrival, in orario = on time, in ritardo = delayed, in anticipo = early). Data of the day is obviously partial, data from previous days is much more significant. Here it is: trainstats.altervista.org/
Well... I don't know if there is another Italy in the world, but in the Italy I come from, trains are always late. It seems like you had a lucky experience with Italian trains. The punctuality index simply mislead. A train is "punctual" when it arrives at the last stop with less than 5' delays. But... It's a "best practic" in Italy to incredible enlarge the arrival time at the last station for example: if the last stop is just a 10 minute ride to the previous, they will count a 20 minute ride in the timetable planning. That said, if that train has 15' delay, it would take 10 minute to reach the last stop instead of planned 20, and it will be considered "arrived on time" with 5' delay.
@@SuperalbsTravels Well... See my comment😂. If the train is really on time, it will arrive 10 minutes earlier or something like that at the last station
Yep in my expirience Trenitalia is waaayy more on time than Deutche Bahn
The "Frecciabianca" brand was a bit more popular some of years ago, when it regularly operated between Milan and Venice, since there was no high speed line. However today, with the new high speed line between Milan and Brescia, the route is operated with Frecciarossa and Frecciargento. Other Frecciabianca routes have been replaced with other trains, and the few remaining will probably be replaced soon.
penso alla fine rimarranno solo quelli in Sicilia
@@il_dalla esatto, sempre che non arrivino i famosi Frecciarossa 1000 dimezzabili
Interesting! That does make sense.
That route seems to have been a bit of everything. Once it was FB as you say, then it was FR for a while, and now seems to be mostly FA with Fyra V250s.
@@SuperalbsTravels -- In the beginning Frecciarossa was for purely high-speed services, Frecciargento for hybrid services (i.e. mixed high-speed and traditional along the same route) and Frecciabianca for improved/refurbished IC-like services on traditional routes. The Frecciarossa brand was so prestigious and successful that towns not along high-speed lines demanded to be served by at least some Frecciarossa train, therefore we got hybrid Frecciarossa services too, the difference with Frecciargento services being the maximum speed (300 vs. 250 km/h) they could attain on high-speed sections. That, plus the opening of new high-speed sections, and the availability of new Frecciargento-suitable trainsets (e.g. Fyras) meant that services that previously were operated as Frecciabianca (and as some hybrid Frecciarossa too) could now be operated as Frecciargento. This, plus the new life of IC trains has made Frecciabianca services basically meaningless...
@@SuperalbsTravels now it's mostly Frecciarossa again on the Adriatic Coast line, usually with older ETR 500, as the Fyra trains were transferred to Milan - Venice - Trieste/Udine line.
The only meaning Frecciabianca actually has is on "Tirrenica" route between Milan and Rome via Genova - Pisa - La Spezia, where the trains are operated by tilting sets (older Pendolinos ETR 460) and thus gaining time on the curved route.
Love these!
There is really nothing high-speed in a Frecciabianca train. They were devised to make a distinction between subsidized and non-subsidized long-distance services. Intercity services were (and still are) subsidized whereas Frecciabianca weren't. In order to justify their higher price they were operated with refurbished coaches and had a slightly better timetable because they skipped some more stations. Over the years the boundary between Frecciabianca and Intercity trains has become more and more blurry, in particular after the signing of the new contract between the government and Trenitalia that made for a significant relaunch of intercity services. Now that intercity trains are being operated with refurbished coaches and their timetables have been revised the distinction between the two has become negligible. In fact most Frecciabianca services have been replaced (or are being replaced) with Frecciargento services whenever they could take advantage of true high-speed lines or with Intercity services in almost every other case...
Interesting, thanks for the insight. I thought I had read somewhere that the FB brand was being retired.
@@SuperalbsTravels -- Maybe you read it from me on r/trains :)
Almost at 13k subscribers. I do like your videos as always and where ever you go to amazes me so much. Keep up the good work 😊
Thank you very much! :)
Nice vid as always
Thank you! :)
Cool video, thanks
Fun fact: almost every high speed/intercity trains pass via Bologna, one of most important connection of italy
Frecciabianca isn't really a HS train, it's merely a replacement of the IC and espresso trains (the latter being famous for their "ritardi"). Most of them actualy run on the routes without Frecciarossa or Frecciargento service (Bari - Milano not being one of them). They are also operated with old IC stock (some equiped with the 1st generation HS locos on both ends) and older Pendolinos. To me they make sense between Bari and Bologna (where the speed rarely - if ever - exceeds 200 km/h), but not on Bologna - Milano (except if servicing Modena, Reggio Emilia, Parma, Piacenza etc, but then they are hardly more than "regionale veloce", or old espresso). I think they have future on secondary lines but probably not at this price. However at the peak of migratory days (national holidays, vacations) any train in Italy is priceless. As to the delay in this case, there may be a reasonable explanation: I haven't taken the route south of Ancona for years, but I remember that between Pescara and Foggia, near Ortona, there was quite a long stretch of single track (I'm not sure whether that's still the case) and we all know: if one train slightly misses its slot on a busy single track (and this one certainly is busy), all the other trains in both directions are affected.
The 33 km single-track bottleneck between Termoli and Lesina is still there. At last they have finally reached an agreement with the Molise region for the doubling of that missing piece of railway but it will require at least 6-7 years of work...
Ahh, the single track would make sense. Quite a few trains were delayed.
The Frecciabianca segment doesn't really make sense anymore now... I think Trenitalia will gradually substitute all FB trains with normal InterCity, on less important routes
Agreed, I think I read that somewhere too, so we will have to see!
I traveled on a Frecciabianca from Modena to Milano Centrale - it started its journey also from Bari. It was over an hour late and the a/c in the 1st class carriage was not working and it was a very hot September 2019 day. Fortunately, the conductor eventually got the a/c to work. I too was disappointed with this product, especially after having traveled on the Frecciaargento from Bologna to Firenze & then the Freeiarossa Executive class from Milano to Venezia. I fully agree with you that the Frecciabianca is very dated and leaves a lot to be desired compared to the other 2 HST brands. It needs replacing ASAP or not do such long routes (Bari to Tarino).
Sounds annoying, but at least the aircon worked in the end! It certainly doesn't compare well to the other 'Frecce' products.
Very nice super very Superalbs travels
Thank you. :)
It's too bad the train was late and you (we) missed the sunset from the train. Great review!
It really is... :(
Thanks!
Not bad at all. After all you are in Italy 😀. I had taken a slow train from Firenze to Sienna and i truly enjoyed the whole ride passing through the rolling hills that Tuscany is famous for. Given the chnce, I would love to do it again and again.
Thank you, sounds great! I have seen pictures of that line recently, and it looks interesting.
I really like the videos where you use your very pleasant voice.
Frecciabianca operates on not high speed railway. The most important line is the Adriatic, from Bologna to Bari/Lecce.
Trains are old Intercity or old Eurostars, top trains before the high speed age. Now they are not less 20 years old.
Long comment incoming, sorry! Whilst the Frecciabianca is not a bad offering necessarily at all, it is lacking. Nice ambience onboard, fairly quiet coaching stock (with the old loco haul style service in this case), comfortable seats and... thats about it. Its a very basic take on a flagship service. If you water down an iphone, you get a sort of decent not great value, functioning phone but not the full features of a full iphone. Here, if you water down a frecciarossa service... you get a functioning product, not bad quality that doesnt give you all the features of a frecciarossa service or even argento. Not terrible but just bad for the money. Id rather Intercity sun in this scenario but not regional as they can be packed and I like a calmer train personally, lol. 6/10 from me.
That's absolutely what I think, it's decent enough, but it doesn't have any 'wow' factor.
A very fair report of a disappointing level of service.
Thanks! :)
Ancona is one of my favorite Italian cities!
There aren't tourists at all, it doesn't seem like a very nice place at first glance, but it's incredibly beautiful on the other side of the peninsula!
It's also a pity you couldn't visit Pesaro - it's so beautiful...
I'd love to visit Italy again and explore, but I will not go until they get rid of masks on trains.
@@SuperalbsTravels i see. so switzerland is perfect at the moment :D
@@simmo-dieredaktion1107 I'm going there a couple of times soon - can't wait!
Did you noticed the white painted rails? They're supposed to reflect the sunlight. Less thermic expansion of the rails on hot summer days.
I sure did! We've even got it back home in the UK.
sadly frecciabiancas aren’t a real thing anymore,
while in the past they had their specific conformation now they’re only an intercity with a different name
Yeah, that makes sense actually. Oh well!
The carriage you travelled on looks as if it had been rebuilt out of the really excellent “grand confort” coaches. Many of those originally had a layout of compartments seating six, hence maybe the problem with the windowless seat. The seating looks quite underwhelming, notably the armrests seem uncomfortable. The problem is that these are not purpose-built trainsets but have been assembled out of older carriages which used to be much more comfortable.
I think you're right!
The freccia bianca in a intercity sun are the same train with differente livery
Wish you would have shown the luggage areas more closely.
Sorry! :(
Was there enough room for 2 large cases in the first class area?
I'd say... probably yes!
we don't use them anymore: it'll be either frecciargento or frecciarossa when it comes to high speed
Yeah, I prefer them too!
Not good value considering you: missed some marvellous views over. The Adriatic, you were assigned an unseatable seat, the electric socket came out in your hand, the lighting was awful, and were given no complimentary food on the way.
Yep, not a great trip overall!
FB is as disappointing as always, never seen a reason to use it since the price is a bit steep compared to level of service.
Agreed, just seems like a fairly bog-standard loco-hauled train, with no level of service really.
Trenitalia and it's delays are disappointing. Every good italian knows it...