MOBILITY ON DEMAND

By project eBussed

Published on 10 September 2021

Italy

Toscana

About this good practice

The Good Practice aims at improving the fruition of heritage and other assets, even in peripheral and island areas (difficult to connect), mitigating the impact of seasonal tourism (mostly along the coastal side) by facilitating access to other Tuscany scenic attractions, in the rest of the territory and also during off-season periods.
Through the initiative, local public transport has been expanded, paying particular attention to people with reduced mobility; moreover accessibility of coastal and inner areas and roads of major tourist interest was improved by enlarging the network of transport services and by developing and implementing an App for disseminating them to citizens and tourists.
The entire service system includes a series of 12 transport service packages, addressed to different target groups and in different localities, using electric transport means as well. Services connect the urban centres with the seaside thus avoiding traffic and parking congestions; shuttle services also link hotel and residential areas to commercial areas; finally, tailored shuttle services, at night, connect to discotheques to ensure the safety for the younger component of the tourist and local communities when travelling to and from those leisure destinations.

Resources needed

The activity, originally implemented in a larger project funded under the Italy-France Maritime I.C.P 2007-2013, has been streamlined since 2020 , with an annual budget in the tune of 150-200 thousand Euro/year coming from Regional & Municipal funding.
HR: Transport personnel.
Logistic support .

Evidence of success

DRT (Demand Responsive Transport) schemes - concerned with urban areas at start - in this case were involving peri-urban centres as well as rural communities. Operated by both public transport companies and private service providers, the DRT scheme offers either as intermediate collective transport services for general use or tailored schemes for specific user groups as aforesaid. Just in one center (Marina di Castagneto) in a single season more than 40,000 passengers were transported!

Potential for learning or transfer

Tuscany Region, Province of Livorno and the various Municipalities involved set aside yearly a recurrent budget to keep the services operational and improved over time.
This joint resolution stems from the service popularity with the local communities and visitors.
Covid restrictions did influence this integrated transport service offer in 2020; open air double-deck bus was successfully introduced in 2021 summer season.
The practice is transferable without need of specific adaptations to regional contexts considering similar service.
Services should not be free, though, but at an encouraging fare (e.g. 1-2 € ticket for an entire day on a single route). The public organisations' cooperation and concertation by means of ad-hoc agreement drawn each season to define service features and components, budgeted costs and financial coverage prove an effective shared governance tool. A presence of intermunicipal cooperation, thus, can make the initiative sustainable also in other regions.