There are 15 associations in Reggio (Reggio Club of the Italian Touring Club; Legambiente; Italia Nostra; WWF; Rhegium Julii Foundation; Anassilaos; “Incontriamoci semper”; Aspromonte Hikers Group; Archeoclub dello Strait; Ulysses; Historical and Tourist Trains; “Apodiafazzi” cultural club; “Ventotene” social political laboratory; College Italian Railway Engineers; “Emerging Sensations”) who ask for a regional Council that «examines the problems connected to the construction of this infrastructure which does not represent a plume that the citizens of Calabria and the South wish to have, but is the point of support from which to change the history of Calabria».
There is no doubt about the need to create high-speed rail in the South. It is enough to look at the map of rail connections in Europe to realize that in Italy there is an absolute void south of Salerno.
«It is absolutely necessary to verify alternative projects, such as that of RFI in 2005, or proposals such as the Larg one, which set the objective of a Rome-Strait travel time of less than 3 hours with a lower cost. To achieve this objective – the associations specify – it is necessary for the line to be designed following the “horizontal alignment” criteria, adopted in all parts of the world in order to reduce the kilometric extension compared to the route of the current railway line. The creation of an infrastructure that connects Rome-Reggio in less than 3 hours would have numerous and important results, as evidenced by the numerous technical-scientific literature on the subject, starting from the growth of the GDP as also attested in research by the University of Naples which found that in the richest regions (with per capita income above the average) the cities equipped with an AV station saw their GDP grow by 10% in the decade 2008-2018 (provincial data) compared to 3% in the provinces that are more than two hours away from a station. In less wealthy regions, cities with HS stations grew by 8% compared to 0.4% in capitals more than two hours away.”
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