Background Prior to the construction of the Bologna–Florence high-speed railway, the existing
Bologna–Florence railway, popularly known as the
Direttissima, had been handling the majority of this traffic at a primary trunk route. This line, which had been completed in 1934, had been built as a superior alternative to the nineteenth century
Pistoia–Bologna railway, providing both higher speeds and additional capacity to traffic. Even in light of this willingness to construct a new national high speed railway network, the Bologna-Florence route was recognised as posing particular difficulty.
Construction During 1992,
Treno Alta Velocità (TAV), a special subsidiary of the Italian railway infrastructure company
Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI) was granted a concession for the design, construction and management of Italy's new high speed railway lines for a period of 50 years. Accordingly, the excavation methods used often varied between individual tunnels, which some requiring preparatory reinforcement along with other mitigatory measures in areas of instability or other challenging characteristics. Defined plans that conformed with
ISO 9002 quality assurance systems were produced to guide the excavation phase of each area. While the cost of constructing the line had been estimated to roughly €1 billion (1991 values in
lire converted to
euros) at the project's start, it ultimately costed €5.2 billion () to complete. ==Features==