Cernobbio, 1 September 2017
Possible overall savings of up to 12 billion Euros a year, almost a whole percentage point of GDP, and more efficient urban transport: these are the potential impacts of optimal organisation of mobility in the 14 metropolitan cities in Italy, in terms of saving time, reducing traffic and improving safety and environmental standards.
Just by halving travel times, in line with those of the major European countries, Italians could save between 5.5 and 7 billion Euros per year, or between 0.34 and 0.44 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
These are the figures emerging from the study conducted by The European House - Ambrosetti in collaboration with FS Italiane, presented today in Cernobbio by the AD and DG of the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane Group, Renato Mazzoncini.
Those who use public transport in the fourteen metropolitan areas of the country (Bari, Bologna, Cagliari, Catania, Florence, Genoa, Messina, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Reggio Calabria, Rome, Turin and Venice) take on average double the time as those in Paris, Madrid, Berlin or London: 61 minutes to cover only 5 and a half kilometres.
According to the FS Italiane-Ambrosetti study, however, there is a margin of improvement which can lead to a reversal of the trend over three to five years, based on three pillars:
In particular, there was a significant infrastructure deficit in fixed-network systems in Italy, with 3.8 kilometres of metropolitan network per million inhabitants.
The modal split leans heavily towards individual mobility, cars and motorcycles (610 cars per 1,000 inhabitants) with 48.3% in Milan, 45% in Turin, 65.5% in Rome and 78% in Palermo against 41.1% in Madrid, 39.2% in Berlin, 33.1 % in London and 16.6% in Paris.
The study calculates the Urban Mobility Index in a completely original way, comparing mobility in the 14 Italian Metropolitan Cities, and scoring it by quality: Milan is in first place with a value of 8.07, followed by Turin (7.12) and Venice (6.41). Then came Rome with 5.60 and Naples with 5.07 in Central and Southern Italy. Messina, with 4.28, Reggio Calabria (4.26) and Palermo (3.90) were at the bottom of the list.
Our country also faces a high level of fragmentation in planning and skills, with a lack of integration between city planning choices and mobility governance.
In short, the future of Italian urban mobility depends on the ability to rebalance the modal split towards collective transport solutions, in which the FS Italiane Group aims to take the leading role; as a multipurpose player like few other transport operators in the world, we can count on the differentiated contribution of our many subsidiaries: from designing and constructing new infrastructures, to participating in tenders for service management and, where possible, acquiring strategic operators.