Background During the 1980s, Italian railway planners studied options for the expansion of its fledging
high-speed rail network. Following an extensive surveying effort, a route for the proposed railway was selected; its total length was , of which 13 percent () was to run through a series of bored tunnels. On 13 December 2009, work was completed on the last line of the line between Gricignano and Napoli Centrale. This includes the
Napoli Afragola station, which was originally due to be open in 2009 when the construction contract was first awarded, but construction had to be temporarily put on hold while the work was retendered. Thus, construction was delayed on several occasions and did not get fully underway until 2015. It was opened on 6 June 2017, with regular traffic for passengers starting from 11 June 2017. Since opening, the Afragola Station has been typically served by 36 high-speed trains running upon the line, carrying a projected 10,000 passengers, each day; 18 of these being Frecciarossas operated by the state rail company
Trenitalia while the other 18 trains are Italos by the privately owned
open access company
Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori (NTV). A new interchange with the railway shall be formed at Afragola station following the reconstruction of the
Circumvesuviana line, which had been reportedly scheduled for completion in 2022. The
Naples–Salerno high-speed railway (also known as the
Linea a Monte del Vesuvio—"line up Mount Vesuvius") was completed in June 2008 to allow high-speed trains to and from
Salerno and the south to bypass Napoli Centrale station. The length of the high-speed section is about . The connecting line to Gricignano di Aversa is now not used for normal operations. ==See also==