Less than a week before the start of the Olympic Winter Games, the new Torino underground is ready to set off. In the presence of the Infrastructures Minister Pietro Lunardi, and dignitaries from the city authorities, the new Line 1 ran along the route connecting the train station of Porta Susa to Collegno. The state-of-the-art underground, the first of its kind in Italy, as it will run without a driver thanks to an automatic system, was blessed by the Cardinal Severino Poletto.

After the opening, from tomorrow until February 8, the underground will be open free of charge to citizens from 14 to 19. From Friday, February 10the, and for the whole period of the Olympic Winter Games, it will cost 0.90 cents and the ticket will be valid for the across the GTT network for the whole day. The underground will operate from 7 to 20 trains, while from March it will extend its service to a full compliment of 23. The route of the Line 1 measures 9.6km, it can transport 30,000 passengers an hour and has a maximum speed of 80km an hour, with a frequency of arrival in peak hour of two minutes.

Turin's first metro line is based on the VAL system in Lille and Toulouse. It starts in the centre of Turin at the main railway station Porta Nuova, crosses the city centre via Porta Susa Railway Station and then runs west to Collegno along Corso Francia. The first section of the new metro, known as Line 1, is 9.6 km long with 15 stations. Invitation to tender for the contract to build the Turin Underground were offered on 1st July 1999.
 

At the end of that year the contract was awarded to SYSTRA S.A./GEODATA. Construction started officially on 19th Dec 2000 with the opening being scheduled for February 2006, just in time for the Winter Olympic Games. Twenty three metro trains were ordered from Siemens in October 2001, and were built in Austria. The VAL 208 trains are formed by four 2.08m wide cars, with each train being a total length of 52m. A typical station is 19m wide and 60m long, and lies at an average depth of 16m. Platforms are separated from the tracks by platform screen doors. Whereas stations were built by the cut-and-cover method, running tunnels were excavated by tunnel-boring machines (7.8 m diameter).

Turin also has an extensive tramway network (which has been extended in the run up to the games to around 200km) which includes light rail lines 3 and 9. Tram line 4 has been upgraded as its important lies in its linking of the northern and southern parts of the city. It efficiently integrates with the new metro line 1, which it crosses in the city centre. The Italian State Railways (Ferrovia dello Stato - Trenitalia) has built the Passante, an underground north-south rail link from Stura to Lingotto. For the Olympics there are trains every 5 minutes between Dora and Lingotto, and every 10 minutes from Dora to Stura.