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European Railroad Discussion > Trams of FlorenceDate: 09/04/24 02:54 Trams of Florence Author: WP17 A few weeks ago we spent a week in Milan where I was able to ride and photograph trams on their extensive tram network. Prior to our trip, fellow TO member dwatry had made several detailed posts covering Milan trams and I then added a few photos of my own. We are now in Florence which I recently discovered also has a tram system consisting of two tram lines radiating in three directions from the main train station — Santa Maria Novella. It’s a very new and relatively small system opening in 2010.
It exclusively uses AnsaldoBreda (now Hitachi) Sirio trams — essentially the model described by dwatry in his recent post about the latest generation of trams in Milan. The T1 line operates from the large new general hospital in NE Florence through downtown to the Scandicci suburb SW of the city. The T2 line operates from the Unita plaza opposite the train station to the airport. The trams operate mostly in dedicated right-of-way. Headways are short — typically around 4-6 minutes. And from my observation ridership is strong; standing room only on several mid-day trips I made. I spent several days exploring this system and here are a small set of photos that attempts to capture the operation. As you will notice all the trams look the same so I’ve attempted to post views with different backdrops that show various parts of Florence. BTW GEST refers to the French RATP subsidiary that operates the system The first set of photos show the end of the T2 line at Unita as well well as left and right views of the Sirio trams.    Date: 09/04/24 02:58 Re: Trams of Florence Author: WP17 The next set of photos show tram action in front of the main train station. Note one shot shows three trams illustrating the frequency of operation
   Date: 09/04/24 03:03 Re: Trams of Florence Author: WP17 The next set shows T1 trams heading west through old town to Porta al Prato. Note the dedicated private right-of-way.
   Date: 09/04/24 03:10 Re: Trams of Florence Author: WP17 The first view shows a T1 tram heading inbound through the commune of Sanducci. Note that this area looks very different from downtown Florence.
The next view shows a T1 tram at the eastern end of the line at Osperdale The third view shows an T1 tram heading downtown at Fortezza    Date: 09/04/24 03:15 Re: Trams of Florence Author: WP17 And finally a few views of T2 trams heading to the airport and a pair at the end of the line at the airport station
   Date: 09/04/24 12:51 Re: Trams of Florence Author: boejoe Thanks for sharing. Great selection of photos. Brings back memories of my recent trip to Florence/Firenze.
jb Date: 09/04/24 19:45 Re: Trams of Florence Author: dwatry Neil - cool shots - thanks for posting. I haven't been to Firenze since 1980 so a lot has changed since I was last there! I'm glad to see they went with conventional trams. I think at one point they were talking of going with the Translohr technology that was installed in Padova and Venezia-Mestre, so happy to see that more sensible minds prevailed at some point.
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