Italian fascists were big on trains actually

Mussolini made big improvements to Italian railway during his reign

There's a slogan about Mussolini that, setting aside his faults, he did at least make the trains run on time. Given this one positive statement about Italian fascism, one will of course find a number of mostly left-wing organizations and outlets saying it is false. Some examples:

• Snopes.com: Mussolini and On-Time Trains (1999)

• ThoughtCo:Did Mussolini Get the Trains Running on Time? Debunking Historical Myths (2019)

• Bloomberg: The Problem With Mussolini and His Trains A closer look at the transportation achievements of an infamous authoritarian (2016) Original title: Stop saying Mossulini made the Trains run on time

• Independent: Rear Window: Making Italy work: Did Mussolini really get the trains running on time? (1994)

So what evidence do they cite? Here's Snopes:

After the "march on Rome" (which was itself a myth of fascist propaganda) on 28 October 1922 that resulted in King Vittorio Emanuele's appointment of Benito Mussolini as prime minister and the accession to power of the fascists in Italy, Mussolini needed to convince the people of Italy that fascism was indeed a system that worked to their benefit. Thus was born the myth of fascist efficiency, with the train as its symbol. The word was spread that Mussolini had turned the dilapidated Italian railway system into one that was the envy of all Europe, featuring trains that were both dependable and punctual. In Mussolini's Italy, all the trains ran on time.

Well, not quite. The Italian railway system had fallen into a rather sad state during World War I, and it did improve a good deal during the 1920s, but Mussolini was disingenuous in taking credit for the changes: much of the repair work had been performed before Mussolini and the fascists came to power in 1922. More importantly (to the claim at hand), those who actually lived in Italy during the Mussolini era have borne testimony that the Italian railway's legendary adherence to timetables was far more myth than reality.

Reading the various sources, they make the following points. First, they put the claim into historical perspective of saying that trains were a propaganda topic for the fascists. True enough. But that doesn't mean it is false. Propaganda is not always false. The Soviets really did kill a lot of Poles in the Katyn massacre, which the Nazis used as war time propaganda.

Second, they mention that many railway stations was already planned or under construction before Mussolini took power. True enough, but that doesn't seem to relate so much to whether fascists made things better.

Third, there's mentions of historical reports that trains were sometimes late. Yes, one can interpret the slogan narrowly as the claim as literally all trains being on time ever, in which case, it is of course false. But even in modern well-run train systems, like those in Japan or Switzerland, trains are sometimes late. Here's some EU-wide data:

The best countries are those that are small, which makes it a lot easier to run trains on time. Ideally, then, we would like this kind of data but as a historical timeline that includes Italy before and after fascism (1922-1943). This doesn't appear to exist. I couldn't find any academic studies of this either. Almost everything about the topic is some history book or article mentioning this topic in passing, mainly to dismiss it as myth or propaganda. But I did find one history book on Italian trains (Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo, 2014), which includes this:

Two years later almost to the day, another train traveler heading north to south was greeted with noisy celebration on his arrival in Stazione Termini: Benito Mussolini. The 1922 March on Rome was greatly facilitated by Fascist elements among the railway workers who arranged special trains for the marchers from northern Italy down to the capital. Mussolini himself hung back, waiting to see if his coup was going to succeed before finally boarding a regular night train that left Milano Centrale at 8:30 p.m. and arrived in Roma Termini at 10:50 the following morning, an hour and a half late. Over the next twenty years Il Duce would make train punctuality a test case for Fascist efficiency. Brutally hard on left-wing unionism, he cut the workforce by more than 50,000 men, making sure that the most militant were among those to go and introducing a railway militia to monitor workers’ behavior. This heavy stick was then balanced with a paternalist carrot: health care, cheap food, and cheap housing made the railway workers a highly privileged group. Recreational spaces and organizations were encouraged, in particular the famous Associazione Nazionale Dopolavoro Ferroviario (After-Hours Railwaymen), which promoted group holidays and sporting activities. In 1928 the Baedeker was able to reassure foreign tourists that the trains in Italy were running mainly on time.

Yet it was during fascism that the long decline began. A drastic downturn in the economy in 1929 cut the numbers of passengers and the volume of freight. The roads were now beginning to offer serious competition and a radically different vision of the future. Some smaller lines were substituted with buses. The regime responded with a program of hi-tech investment. Since coal was an expensive and politically sensitive import, a resource foreign governments might easily withhold from them in the event of sanctions, the Fascists speeded up the process of electrifying the main lines, particularly in the northern mountains, where they were able to exploit the territory’s hydroelectric resources and hence alleviate the problem of coal smoke in tunnels. Italy was and still is ahead of other countries in railway electrification. New lines were laid between many main stations to shorten the distances. In 1937 an Italian electric locomotive achieved the world speed record for a train in commercial operation with an average speed of 106 miles per hour on a regular passenger trip from Bologna to Milan.

So clearly, Mussolini loved trains, and made them his pet project with funding and innovation. The advent of cheap personal cars caused some decline in trains, though this has nothing much to do with Mussolini, and happened everywhere else as well. In the same way, Italy's railway rebounded after WW1 which happened before Mussolini took power so really something he was responsible for. But politicians taking credit for good things even when they did not cause them is a central feature of democracy as well, and has nothing to do with Mussolini. Voters see it this way too, when the economy is good, incumbents have a larger advantage in reelection chances ("economic voting"). By the way, Wikipedia agrees that the fascists were big on trains and made many improvements:

So if we think of some interpretations of "Mussolini made the trains run on time":

• Narrow. Every train ran on time after Mussolini took power. Clearly false, even today for better countries. This is a strawman.

• Medium. Mussolini made trains run more on time than they did before. Probably true, but seems there's no good data.

• Broad. Mussolini made big improvements to Italian railways. Certainly true.

In fact, some of the articles above concur in this. Take the Bloomberg piece:

“The story that Mussolini made the trains run on time arose in the late ‘20s and gained credence abroad mainly because of well-heeled British tourists who considered the hopelessly refractory Italians governable only by dictatorial means,” wrote Victoria de Grazia, a Columbia history professor, in The New York Times back in 1994. “His regime built magnificent central stations and upgraded the main lines on which businessmen, politicians and comfort-minded tourists sped between Milan and Rome.”

So why must people stop saying he made the trains run on time? It's the unspoken rule of writing: you should never say anything positive about any right-wing dictatorship lest you be accused of (secretly) being evil too.