In 1997, a new category, "Eurostar", was introduced as the brand name of the high-speed trains run by Trenitalia in Italy. Since 2006, trains started to be operated and promoted under further sub-brands and less and less sold under the name "Eurostar". In June 2012, the category Eurostar was officially divided into various subcategories indicating various high-speed services. The new categories created were Frecciarossa for the fastest trains, Frecciargento for the next category of trains and finally Frecciabianca. Since all these three train categories are named as "Freccia", the high-speed trains operated by Trenitalia are named "Le Frecce", on a par with TGV in France, ICE in Germany and AVE in Spain.
Frecciarossa
trains operate at speeds of up to 300 km/h. It runs mostly on high-speed line and is the premier service of Trenitalia and competes with.italo, operated by Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori. The service is provided by ETR 500 and, since June 2015, by ETR 1000. There are four classes, namely, Executive, Business, Premium and Standard class, with a restaurant car. There are plans to increase the speed of Frecciarossa service to 350 km/h in intermediate-term. Comprehensive test-runs with ETR 1000 were carried out from Autumn 2015 to the end of 2016.
Frecciargento
trains operate at speeds of up to 250 km/h. In agreement to the use of Pendolino trains policy, only some sections of the railway lines of Frecciargento are high speed and it runs on conventional rail lines in the other sections. The third and fourth generation of Pendolino trains are employed for Frecciargento trains. There are two classes as well as one restaurant car.
Frecciabianca
trains operate at up to 200km/h and 250 km/h on conventional lines. ETR 460 and ETR 463 of Pendolino family are used in services between Rome and Reggio Calabria, Ravenna and Genoa. Since December 2015ETR 470 has also been used in the Rome-Reggio Calabrialine. FS Class E.414 and FS Class E.402 locomotives are used in other lines. There are two classes and a corner bar in Frecciabianca services.
