Rail transport in Italy high-speed train was the Italian ETR 200, which in July 1939 went from Milan to Florence at , with a top speed of . With this service, the railway was able to compete with the upcoming airplanes. The Second World War stopped these services. After the Second World War, Italy started to repair the damaged railways, and built nearly of new tracks. Nowadays the rail tracks and infrastructure are managed by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI), while the train and the passenger section is managed mostly by Trenitalia. Both are Ferrovie dello Stato (FS) subsidiaries, once the only train operator in
Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane The workforce was reduced to half: from 216,310 employees in 1988 to 112,018 in 1999. Divisions were created to rationalize the management. The company was privatized in 1992 with the creation of the new Ferrovie dello Stato SpA, a joint-stock company, following a European guideline. However, the privatization was only formal, since shares were still owned by the Italian Government. On 1 June 2000, the company's two main divisions, service and infrastructure, were separated and two different independent companies were created: Trenitalia, responsible for transport service, and Rete Ferroviaria Italiana, responsible for the management of the rail infrastructure. Both companies