Milan's Metro Ambitions Face Global Scrutiny: How the City Stacks Up Against London, Paris and Berlin

Milan is at a crossroads. While the city prepares for its role as co-host of the 2026 Winter Olympics, transport planners are grappling with a question that has preoccupied colleagues across Europe's major capitals: how do you modernise ageing infrastructure without grinding the city to a halt?

The Metro Line 4 extension to Linate Airport, originally slated for completion before the Games, now faces delays pushing into 2027. The €1.3 billion project exemplifies the ambitious infrastructure vision that defines Milan's development strategy. Yet when compared with simultaneous transport upgrades across London, Paris, and Berlin, Milan's progress reveals both strengths and vulnerabilities in how the city tackles major works.

London's Elizabeth Line, which opened two years behind schedule at a cost of £18.9 billion, eventually transformed connectivity across the capital. Paris completed its Line 14 extension southward in 2024, adding seven new stations despite dense urban conditions. Berlin's U5 line, finished in 2021, successfully navigated Nazi-era bunkers and wartime debris while connecting Alexanderplatz to Lichtenberg. Each city absorbed project delays with relatively minimal service disruption—a lesson Milan continues to absorb.

The Milanese approach differs notably. Rather than single mega-projects, the city has pursued parallel initiatives: Line 1 extension towards Rho (hosting this year's Milan Expo infrastructure), the S13 regional connection towards Bergamo, and the tram modernisation programme sweeping through neighbourhoods from Porta Vittoria to Lambrate. This distributed strategy theoretically spreads disruption thinner. In practice, it means residents like those near Porta Romana experience years of consecutive roadworks.

Data from the city's mobility authority suggests Milan moves approximately 1.3 million passengers daily across its three metro lines—comparable to Berlin's network but dwarfed by Paris's 4.5 million and London's 2.7 million. That relatively modest volume offers Milan an advantage: less passenger pressure during construction, though also less political urgency.

Cost-consciousness separates Milan further. The €1.3 billion Line 4 extension calculates to approximately €114 million per kilometre—significantly below London's Elizabeth Line (€1.05 billion per km) but above Berlin's recent projects. This efficiency partly reflects Italian labour cost realities, but also raises questions about project scope and timeline reliability that plague Italian infrastructure more broadly.

As the Olympics approach, Milan's transport gamble becomes increasingly visible. The city has chosen incremental expansion over transformative overhaul. Whether this pragmatic approach proves wiser than the grand gestures attempted by other capitals remains the defining infrastructure question of 2026.

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