Entrepreneurs and high-speed railways

From The Economist's Gulliver blog:

RAIL transport in Italy is being shaken up. Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori (NTV) has announced plans to run Europe’s first private high-speed rail service there. The group will operate the service on three main routes using state-owned tracks. The trains—the new Automotrice Grande Vitesse designed by Alstom, a French company—will travel at 190mph, cutting the four-hour Rome-Milan journey to three hours. NTV has put in a €650m order for 25 of the trains, each capable of carrying 460 passengers. The first four will be operational in 2011, but NTV intends eventually to run 54 services a day.