Italy Introduces Ferrari on Rails

Italy's burgundy red Ferrari on rails is finally going into service. Starting on April 28, the "Italo" will travel at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour between Milan, Rome and Naples. The new high-speed train is more environmentally friendly and also cheaper than its competitors -- on both the rails and roads.

You could say the same about SpaceX. It uses NASA’s launch pad, and get’s most of it’s business from NASA.

It’s better than it being 100% government run. The Ferrari train competes and beats in price and performance the state run train. Competition is good.

It ain't real competition. The way they used to do competition on the rails in the past was parallel railroads; this is still in evidence in the USA in some places, e.g. where you can still see the former Pennsylvania Railroad and Baltimore & Ohio Railroad run parallel from Washington DC to Philadelphia (back in those days, the PRR’s Congressional competed against the B&O’s Royal Blue for traffic between New York and DC; the PRR had the speed edge due to having the electrified railroad, but the B&O’s train was more luxurious); but nowadays, thanks to the government, the former PRR is mostly passenger (Amtrak and commuter railroads) and the B&O is almost all freight (except for commuter service operated between Baltimore and DC, under contract to CSX in a—guess what—public-private partnership).

If the government had stayed out of the way back in the 50s in all forms of transportation, then private companies could have figured out how and where to build highways and airports out of pocket, just as the railroads built and maintained their own roads out of pocket. This is what we end up with for following Europe’s bad precedents.

Nowdays with the environazis in charge it’s tough enough building a single road or track let alone multiple parallel ones.

You see the separation of “medium” and “product” model in many industries, where the medium is shared by many different product providers. This is true in transmission lines, broadband, pipelines, roadways, railroads, etc. May not be ideal, but perfection doesn’t exist in the real world.

I think the trains work for Italy. The population centers are more dense. They have a fantastic “scooter” culture where you see little old ladies in skirts hop on their Vespa and just go.... It’s very different than here.

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