Milan Public Transport

"Milan Transportation

Milan is the second railway hub of Italy, and the five major stations of Milan, amongst which the Milan Central station, are among Italy's busiest. The first railroad built in Milan, the Milan and Monza Rail Road was opened for service on August 17, 1840. High speed train lines are under construction all across Italy, and new lines will open from Milan to Rome and Naples in one direction, and to Turin in another. Other than the Stazione Centrale, some High Speed Trains will also stop at:

* Milano Rogoredo (on the Bologna/Rome line)

* Milano/Rho Fiera (on the Turin line)

* Milano Pioltello (on the Venice line, in the planning stage)

The Suburban Railway Service ( "S" Lines, a service similar to the French RER and German S-Bahn), composed of eight suburban lines with ten more scheduled for 2008, connects "Greater Milan" to cities such as Como and Varese. The Regional Railway Service ("R"), on the other hand, links Milan with the rest of Lombardy and the national railway system. The Passante ferroviario is an underground railway serving a couple of "S" lines and functions essentially like another subway line (and is even marked as such on subway maps), except that it is connected to LeNord and Trenitalia suburban networks. See the map of the M (subway) + S (regional metropolitan railway) Network on msrmilano.com Go on

Milan has three subway lines (M1 – red, M2 – green, M3 – yellow) in a system called Milan Metro – La Metrò or sometimes Il Metrò, with a network size of more than 80 km. There is also a light metro line, "Metrò S. Raffaele", connecting the San Raffaele Hospital with Cascina Gobba station (M2). Extensions of lines 1, 2 and 3 are under construction, which will create more than 15 km of track with 10 new stations. Line 5, linking San Siro sports stadium (in the west) with Viale Fulvio Testi (in the northeast), through the new City Life complex, is also under construction, and is expected to be finished during the first half of 2012. Line 4, merged with a proposed line 6, linking San Cristoforo railway station (southwest) with Linate Airport is in the planning stage.

The "Passante" is a railway tunnel under the city centre used by suburban trains, allowing passengers coming from the suburbs to change directly to the three (soon to be four) metro lines at Garibaldi, Repubblica, Porta Venezia and Rogoredo stations.

Greater Milan also has one of the most extensive tramway systems in the world, with more than 286 km of track and 20 lines.

Milan also has four trolleybus routes; included in the fleet are ten air-conditioned Cristalis trolleybuses.

Ninety-three bus lines cover over 1,070 km. The local transportation authority (ATM) transported more than 600 million passengers in 2003 .

Milan has a taxi service operated by private companies and licensed by the City of Milan (Comune di Milano). All taxis are the same color, white. Prices are based on a set fare at the beginning and an additional fare based on time elapsed and distance traveled. As the number of licences is kept low by lobbying of present taxi drivers and finding a taxi may be difficult in rush hours or rainy days, and almost impossible during public transportation strikes, which occur often."

This articol is release from GNU Free Documentation License. It use material from Wikipedia voices: "Milan".