More than three thousand people travel every day on the Varese-Mendrisio line

Announced as a revolution of transport towards the border, in these days, the railway Varese-Lugano have turned four months of activity. Today, how many people use the line?

It must be said that today, specific data about the distances are not available. However, Swiss Federal Railways provided some data to VareseNews, updated to March 2018, just only two months after the beginning of the service, which give the idea of the movement that is growing on the railway, which supports local and across-the-border traffic.

 

First piece of data: there are 3,150 passengers on average who travel every day on the connections of the line between Mendrisio and Varese. In this count there are also, for examples, travellers of the internal connection between Stabio and Medrisio or, another example, travellers from Induno to Varese who use Tilo trains.

The other piece of data, that is more specific, is the one about the across-the-border traffic, on Italy-Switzerland connections, such as from Varese to Lugano or from one of the stations of Valceresio to Stabio: transits to the border have been calculated every day as 800 towards Switzerland and 850 towards Italy.

It must be remembered that the railway has been opened in early January 2018, but, the running model is not complete yet: the extension towards the South, towards Gallarate and Malpensa have still to be completed, which will expand significantly the basin with direct connection from and to the Ticino (a general calculation – including just stations of Busto, Gallarate and Ferno-Lonate – which amount to about more 170 thousand inhabitants in the basin).

To make a comparison, it must be remembered that the preliminary study commissioned in 1999 by FTO (Federal Transport Office) locates about 7,190 travellers daily expected for the connections between Varese and Mendrisio. But, as said, we are very far from the point the railway is running regularly.

The start of Como-Mendrisio-Varese-Gallarate-Malpensa line is expected in June 2018.