New rail pass for Italy, great value
 

Trenitalia(Italian Railways) introduced a new rail pass and it looks like a great deal.

It's called Abbonamento PLUS 3 and PLUS 5 and valid for unlimited travel by regional trains(Regionale, Regionale Veloce) all over Italy for 3 or 5 consecutive days, the cost is 40€ for 3 days or 60€ for 5 days.

It means you can travel as much as you car for 12-13€/day.

Hope it'll be a success and Trenitalia will continue to sell it!

https://www.trenitalia.com/it/treni_...lus-3-e-5.html

Thanks for sharing, BDKR, sounds good.

This could be a reasonable option for some travelers, with a few caveats.

Regional trains are slower, and often require multiple connections to get to a given destination, On major routes, there may be only one or two regional trains a day. For example, from Florence to Venice, you have to change trains twice if you travel by regional train, and the trip will take over four hours. If you use a high-speed train, the trip takes two hours and fourteen minutes, with no change of train. Not only that, but if you buy your tickets online well in advance, you can get a high-speed ticket for about €30.

The other consideration is that regional train tickets are usually very cheap, so you'd have to travel a lot to cover the cost of the pass. Where I live, to go to Rome I usually have to take a regional train, as there are no high-speed trains and only a few medium-speed trains. The trip on a regional train takes about 3 1/2 hours, and the ticket costs €16.45. Even if I made two such trips in three days, I wouldn't cover the cost of a €40 three-day pass. I can't imagine a situation where I'd want to make such a long trip every day to make the pass pay off.

This pass would mostly be useful for people who will make a couple of long round-trips in a short period of time. For example, someone based in Florence could make a round trip to Arezzo one day (€18), to Siena another day (€20) and to Lucca one a third day (€16). for a total of €54 in three days. In this case, the three-day pass would save a little money. I'm not sure many people would want to make three back-to-back longish day trips. Even if I did, I would prefer to spend a little more and buy the individual tickets day by day, so that I would feel free to change my mind about one or more of the trips, based on the weather or my mood.

Another situation would be where someone preferred a base in a smaller town, commuting into a nearby city every day. For instance, someone might want to base in Terni, a nice little Umbrian city an hour by train from Rome. In this case, three consecutive round trips (€44) would cover the cost of the three-day pass. A similar situation would be basing in Orvieto, a slightly longer and more expensive (€51) trip. In both cases, I think one would want to spend at least one day visiting Orvieto or Terni.

I can't imagine any situation where the six-day pass would be useful, because making six long trips on consecutive days doesn't seem reasonable.