Why It’s So Difficult to Build Subways in Rome

There's an old joke I heard while visiting Rome. It translates to "Did you hear? They found the ancient ruins of the C tunnel while excavating for the C tunnel."

Obviously the solution is to just build another city on top, complete with subway.

Screw subways, Rome should make Elevated Rail on fake aqueducts.

My uncle was a project manager for a large construction company. His stories about working in North America vs. Europe are hilarious. In the US, finding a human bones or an archeological artifact causes huge delays, requires calling in specialists from far away, and will usually make the news. In Europe they have specialists on-call for a whole slew of things that will inevitably be dug up. Archialogists for the really old stuff, historians for the more modern, and even EOD techs for unexploded bombs from wars. Deadlines would always include the expectations for the delays that would occur on every project and no one batted an eye at finding something that required extra care.

Rome was not built in a day makes more sense now

Rome is “please don’t touch that, it’s 2000 years old” - the city

If you think that's bad, try digging deep enough to avoid damaging ancient artefacts but not too deep because the city is coastal. Thessaloniki's metro network has been under construction since 2006 and is only expected to begin operating later this year.

I happen to live in Rome, right on line C, and I can say that everything stated in the video is spot on, however it doesn't tell the whole truth. There are some other aspects that add up to the archaeological challenges that a city like Rome making building infrastructure much more complicated, and already built infrastructure much more unpleasant to use. To briefly sum them up: -The municipal transport company is extremely inefficient and poorly managed, as are the in-house company and offices in charge of managing infrastructure projects. The line C extension has been plagued by dozens of project reviews even before any construction started, regardless of who was mayor at the time. -The municipal, regional and national government are usually never ruled by the same party and, in a very roman fashion, they all try to mess with each other's business, for example withholding funds, denying authorizations, changing regulations. They then accuse each other of not caring about the city and not being capable of running it properly. The whole saga with the Rome-Ostia and Rome-Viterbo commuter lines, operated for years by the city but owned by the region, which should have been turned into metro lines decades ago, is a prime example of these conflicts. The company building the C line threatening to irreversibly bury the tunnel boring machines deep under the Coliseum unless they received funding before a specific date to keep digging until Piazza Venezia is another example. -The fact that most of Rome is considered an Archaeological area puts many infrastructure projects under the jurisdiction of an authority, called "Soprindendenza", which has a tendency to stop them asking for completely unnecessary changes just because they can: it recently happened for two tram lines, one of which would simply need a renovation and would only cross the archaeological area for around 250m in the median of a four lane road, but whose development has been halted until who knows when. -Rich NIMBYs are extremely powerful in Rome, and many local newspapers openly support them. One person was able to delay the opening of a railway line in the suburbs for years just by sending requests for more paperwork to a local tribunal.

Damn, excavation in Rome must be so fun for archaeologists

Excavations accidents in other countries: i think we found a dead Dog, poor lad. Excavations accidents in italy: wait, is this the tomb of Caesar?

Just build a subway at street level. Hundreds of years later it will be underground.

One for the end of year feast extravaganza: Roman legend placed the founding of the city in 753 BCE, not 713 BCE

Naples, an even older city, has exactly the same problem. At 37 years old, they're still building lines that were started before I was born 😭

And yet, even with all these digging difficulties, setbacks, and archeological discoveries, Italy still builds metros more cheaply than America. Rome's Line C is estimated to cost €3.5 billion (about $3.794 billion USD, and almost twice the original budget), and is so far 19.5 km long (12.1 miles), half underground and half above, with 22 stations open, and some still under construcion. New York's 2nd Avenue line, meanwhile, cost $4.45 billion for only 2.4 km (1.8 miles) for Phase I, with only 3 new stops, and future Phase II will cost $7.7 billion for only 3 stops.

In the town were I grew up in northern France, they have a similar problem. You can't dig a hole without finding something centuries old. In my old school, they wanted to build an underground gym under the schoolyard. As soon as they started digging, they found yet another merovingian cemetery. Needless to say, patience is key if you want to get anything done.

If you understand Italian, i wholly recommend one of the most recent videos from the channel GeoPop that focuses specifically on the Colosseo/Fori Imperiali station. Building Line C has been a complicated and extenuating process and the section that's being built now is by far the hardest. For the Venezia station, they've done a decade of archeological studies and only started actually building the station last summer, meaning it'll be finished in about 10 years. Luckily, the Fori Imperiali and Porta Metronia stations are scheduled to open next year.

the mexico city metro is pretty similar in this aspect. there have been thousands of archaeological finds during its construction and there's even an ancient temple to a mexica deity integrated into the Pino Suárez station

Amy gutted not to get a field trip to Rome.

The metro in Athens is a lot like this. It includes many artifacts on display that were found during excavation and some sites that were preserved in place within the station.

they dont need it because all roads lead to rome