The "Alta Velocita'" project was started long before Berlusconi came to power; officially, it was the only way to keep the italian railway links with Europe "up to speed", because France and Germany had big plans already underway (those lucky, mainly flat countries can afford to upgrade their rail system with relative ease).
From the start, it was clear that this project was going to be full of pork for everyone involved... they included all sort of long-dues and/or unnecessary upgrades, like a partial revamp for the central station in Bologna (a previous attempt at replacing this crucial node with an office building for speculative reasons had been shot down by citizen worried about losing a symbol of the fascist terrorist actions in the early 80s - google for "Bologna 2 august 1980") and costs started to grow; and it was still in the planning stage! Expensive surveys had to be undertaken and the impact on environment was evaluated thoroughly; this was under the previous, leftist government, and the ruling party knew that, to keep their activists happy, they had to do things properly and foresee all the possible "green" attacks. Then the contracts were signed, and at the same time, the government changed; to clear his stance on conflicts of interest, Berlusconi appointed as "Minister for Infrastructure" an engineer, Claudio Lunardi, whose company was deeply involved with the Alta Velocita' project. (that's like appointing an oilman to a task-force for energy! oh, wait...)
Costs kept going up and up, of course; to be fair to Lunardi, his company was perfectly on schedule. For example, while excavating the Appenini mountains between Tuscany and Emilia, they had to pick up the slack from companies at the other end of the tunnels. They planned to complete the project while Silvio was still in government, what a triumph that would have been! But then something happened, and one of the building company failed. They simply left the sites as they were and went home. I believe it took 6 months to sort out the mess and find a replacement. And costs, of course, went up again. But Lunardi had total confidence from Berlusconi, so...
Then, we have the fresh problems in Piedmont. As it's mentioned in the original post, Alta Velocita' was planned to help the Turin bid for the Winter Olympics. Unfortunately, they were a bit behind in that area, and started to excavate certain traits only last autumn. The project was now almost a decade-old, all the plans had been checked and double-checked and triple-checked by all the previous governments and bureaucrats, everyone knew that it was going to start any minute now... and people rioted. Why? It probably was a politically motivated move form local councils that felt left out of the pork barrel, helped by external "green" extremists that love a good fight only when it's totally useless. They even assaulted the olympic torch-bearer, and the torch was then extinsguished for safety reasons, to the shame of an otherwise very efficient organisation. In the end, I believe (as I wasn't there anymore, I can't be sure on this) the councils were more or less bought off by the Piedmont regional assembly, for which the Olympics are extremely important, and the work is being carried out as planned.
One is on rising costs. What newspapers (and politicians) decrying rising costs often fail to mention is that costs rise due to inflation - i.e., the rise in 2000 prices may be much less than that in actual prices. But f.e. opponents of public transport will always emphasize the latter.
Another is the "green extremists". I am both a pro-rail (and a railroader) and green, and sometimes find myself in a position where I want to defend either side against the other... So here, I agree that there are completely unreasonable environmentalist protesters, but there is also often the issue of lack of local consultations (the government and bureaucrats are far away and think in macroeconomic terms - their triple-checking is not enough), or consultations without taking any input into account as plan modifications. In Switzerland or Spain, and to a lesser degree Germany, local consultations are well-organised and standardised in the process, and there is less of this trouble. From the little I heard of the long history of the Terzo Valico project, TAV's local consultation seems rather messy and unsatisfactory.
Finally, a furthering question: are you talking about protests against the Torino-Novara line specifically, or is this connected to the Val di Susa protests against the new French-Italian line with the giant base tunnel? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The ex-Craxi-ist angle is indeed news to me - sad, sad thing; though still not as bad as what happened here in Hungary when a bunch of neo-nazi youth took over the first Green Party in a coup, and then copyrighted the name(!). Also agreed about the olympic torch (warning about my commenting style: I often to fail to mention when I agree with something I do not respond to...). However, pelting rich people in fur at La Scala - I'd like to do that :-) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
