Transportation and telecommunications

Water transport

Water transport was the beginning crucial means of linking Italy with its Mediterranean trading partners, even though its only navigable internal urine is the Po River. At the meter of union in the nineteenth century, the ports of Venice, Palermo, and Naples were of bang-up significance, and the italian merchant fleet was leading in the Mediterranean Sea. The 4,600 miles ( 7,400 kilometer ) of italian coastline are punctuated by many ports, and a big majority of imports and exports arrive and leave the nation by sea. The star dry-cargo ports are Venice, Cagliari, Civitavecchia, Gioia Tauro, and Piombino, while those handling chiefly petroleum products are Genoa, Augusta, Trieste, Bari, and Savona. Naples and Livorno handle both types of cargo. half of the commercial port traffic is concentrated on only one-tenth of the coastline. The industries of Piedmont and Lombardy make dense demands on the nautical outlets, particularly Genoa, which is the most extensive and crucial italian port but which has great difficulty expanding because of the mountains surrounding it .Genoa, Italy port of Genoa, Italy.

© Antonio S./Shutterstock.comGaeta, Italy port of Gaeta, Italy .© Galina Mikhalishina/Shutterstock.com

Rail transport

The main time period of railroad track construction was about the clock of fusion, from 1860 until 1873. The heavy costs involved in laying down the infrastructure caused the government to sell off its stake in 1865. By this time the networks serving Milan, Genoa, and Turin in the union were well-developed. These were followed by links through the Po valley to Venice ; to Bari, along the Adriatic coast ; down the Tyrrhenian coast, through Naples, to Reggio di Calabria ; and from Rome to the Adriatic cities of Ancona and Pescara. The sicilian and sardinian networks besides were built. A time period of rationalization and modernization followed in 1905 when the network was renationalized ; construct of new rail lines continued throughout the twentieth hundred. An exceeding feature was the early electrification of the lines, many of which ran through long tunnels and were ill-suited to steam baron. This modernization was due to Italy ’ s early exploitation of hydroelectricity. Although the rail network is well distributed throughout the peninsula, there are authoritative qualitative differences between its northerly and southerly components. The north enjoys more patronize services, faster trains, and more double track lines than the south. Compared with other european networks, the italian trains carry little freight but many passengers, partially because the railways failed to keep pace with the rapid rate of industrialization after World War II, while the passenger lines were made cheap through government subsidies. Eighty percentage of the vilify network was controlled by the country via Ferrovie dello Stato ( “ State Railways ” ) before it was privatized in 1992. The italian railways are connected with the rest of Europe by a series of batch routes, linking Turin with Fréjus in France, Milan with Switzerland via the Simplon Tunnel, Verona to Austria and Germany via the Brenner Pass, and Venice to eastern Europe via Tarvisio. In the late twentieth hundred routes were expanded, extended, and modernized, including the accession of high-speed lines and computerize book and freight restraint systems. The railway network extends some 10,000 miles ( 16,000 kilometer ) .

Road transport

The italian road network is subdivided into four administrative categories—express highways ( autostrade ) and home, peasant, and municipal roads ( strade statali, strade provinciali, and strade comunali, respectively ). Road construction in Italy flourished between 1955 and 1975. between 1951 and 1980, surfaced roads, excluding highways and urban streets, increased by 72 percentage to cover more than 183,000 miles ( 295,000 kilometer ). Automobile sales increased faster than in any early westerly european economy during this period. much of this was due to mass production of cheap models by Fiat. Road construction in the confederacy peculiarly benefited from funds released by the Southern Development Fund .Brenner Pass: Europabrücke The Europabrücke ( “ Bridge of Europe ” ), Brenner Pass .Ralf Pfeifer

More spectacular than general road construction was the development of the highway arrangement. This undertaking was farmed out to concessionary companies and financed by tolls, releasing it from the boring state bureaucracy and explaining its rapid progress. By the 1980s the network extended over 3,700 miles ( 6,000 kilometer ), making it second in Europe ( only West Germany ’ second was bigger ). The main axis runs north-south from Chiasso on the swiss margin via Milan, Bologna, Florence, and Rome all the way south to Reggio di Calabria at the very topple of the peninsula. Another major route cuts southward from the Brenner Pass along the Adriatic slide to Bari and Taranto. A dense lattice of highways serves the north, linking Turin to Milan, Venice, and Trieste on an east-west bloc and to Bologna and Genoa. early east-west routes link Rome to Pescara across the Apennines and connect Naples to Bari. Commercial road enchant has increased in recent years ; Italy has one of the five largest trucking fleets in Europe. congestion is one of the main problems facing Italy ’ mho urban streets. many town centres are based on medieval street plans and are ineffective to cope with levels of traffic and pollution generated by a population with one of the highest rates of car possession in westerly Europe. several cities, including Rome and Milan, have introduced measures to reduce the issue of cars entering the city centres at flower hours and promoted other modes of transport. In the twenty-first hundred some towns took these steps even further, embracing a drift that came to be known as the “ Slow City ” bowel movement. By wholly banning automobiles from historic city centres and promoting the use of local products, the dozens of towns that adhered to the “ Slow City ” philosophy sought to preserve their traditional character .

Air transport

Of the small proportion of freight passing through italian airports, a majority of it is processed either at Malpensa Airport near Milan or at Leonardo district attorney Vinci Airport ( in Fiumicino ) near Rome. These airports, about evenly, besides handle the bulk of passenger traffic, though Linate Airport in Milan and Marco Polo ( Tessera ) Airport in Venice carry a large count vitamin a well. Many of the other regional airports ( including those at Turin, Genoa, Verona, Bologna, Rimini, Pisa, Naples, Brindisi, Palermo, Catania, and Cagliari ) are used for domestic flights, except during the flower tourist season, when they may absorb some of the vacation traffic from other european destinations .air traffic control An air traffic accountant at Karol Wojtyla Airport in Bari, Italy .© Angelo Giampiccolo/Shutterstock.com The most frantic developments in air tape drive occurred in the 1960s, with a 10-fold increase in freight traffic and a sevenfold increase in passengers. At that time Alitalia, Italy ’ s national airline, became one of the largest in Europe. It remained feasible by surviving the petroleum crisis of the 1970s, diversifying as a resultant role of airline deregulation in the 1980s, and forming partnerships with foreign airlines in the 1990s and early twenty-first hundred. Alitalia filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and was purchased by an italian investment group. Italy ’ s flagship carrier was merged with Air One, a domestic rival, and years of restructure led to a more competitive airline .Alitalia-Linee Aeree Italiane Alitalia Airbus A321-100 .Adrian Pingstone

Telecommunications

Italy had put into use some 15 million broadband Internet connections, 22 million personal computers, and 20 million main call lines by the early twenty-first hundred. Roughly half of all Italians were even Internet users, and cellular phones had achieved an astonishing level of penetration. Italy was one of the largest wireless markets in Europe, and, with more than 90 million active mobile phones in 2015, the count of cellular phones in Italy outstripped its population by more than half.

Russell L. KingPaola E. SignorettaThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica