Regenerating Communities. New Life for a Local Railway: A Technological and Environmental Study

Abstract

Revamping abandoned railways is often associated with leisure functions and non-routine trips. When areas evolve from rural settlements to conurbations with mixed land use and high travel demand, the reuse of no-longer-operational rail services can prove to be appropriate to meet such new requirements. This is the case of an abandoned railway in central Italy, the Sangritana Line, whose rehabilitation could serve a former rural area, now under continuous development. The paper outlines operational features of the new service, starting from the available Sangritana infrastructure, in order to highlight the drivers and barriers associated with the reopening of operations. The goal is to provide scientific corroboration for similar feasibility studies and stress the relevance of rehabilitating railways in urban regeneration processes according to a vision called the Multiple Rs, which associates the new rail supply with the possibility of requalifying several components of the urban environment. To this end, along with the initial description of the status quo and the local constraints, the paper elaborates the methodology adopted for this feasibility study, the main operational findings, with a focus on the potential environmental benefits, and the implications according to the Multiple Rs approach.

Urban Sprawl and Mobility

“…Those modifications have remained etched in the urban fabric as traces of the different transitions from one mode of transport to another: from animal traction to mass motorization of the 1950s; from the introduction of public and rail transport to modern sustainable mobility trends. In this trend, the revamped electrification of public transport [3] is an attempt to reconcile mass transit demand with environmental concerns and built environments safeguard [4]. However, among transportation implications in the urban asset, car is the main character.…”