The long-awaited railway ring around Rome (anello ferroviario) is to be completed by 2010 and is being dubbed as a new metro line for the city. Work on the north section of the ring in the Tor di Quinto area of the city will begin in two years. In the meantime, the business and commercial activities in the area will be moved to make room for the railway track. Around 80 companies with 400 employees will be transferred to a 3,000 sqm purpose-built area in Prima Porta near the Flaminio cemetery.

The idea for a railway link around the capital was first suggested after world war two and was nearly completed for the millennium Jubilee year 2000, but the tracks between St Peters (near the Vatican in the centre of the city) and that of Vigna Clara (on the Via Flaminia going north) were never activated. Now there is a plan to lay more track, linking the area of the city that goes from Vigna Clara through Tor di Quinto to the Rome-Viterbo line and then on to the busy Rome-Orte connection, which leads to Fiumicino international airport in one direction and then eventually north to Florence in the other.

The project to build the extra 10km of railway track to complete the railway ring will cost an estimated 1.3 billion.