“Local public transport is of great value for the community because it opens the doors of our cities, makes our country enjoyable for all and supports the other economic activities of the area, which becomes attractive in terms of housing, business and tourism ”.
This was declared by Andrea Gibelli (in the photo) – President of ASSTRA, the reference employers’ association of Local Public Transport in Italy, on the occasion of the conference “A Country In Movement: The Recovery Of Tourist Mobility And More, Between Local Public Transport It’s regional.” Event organized yesterday in Rome by breakinglatest.news on the world of transport.
Gibelli’s analysis starts here: “Effective transport means 100 mild euros saved per year in Europe. The data contained in the document ‘EU Funds and Financing for Resilient Local Mobility’ by UITP leave no doubts: traffic congestion costs the European economy 1% of its GDP, 100 billion euros a year and every euro of value created by local public transport generates a further creation of value between 4 and 6 euros. All the more significant elements for Italy where tourism generated an added value of 572 billion euros in 2019 alone, 5% of the total gross added value of the EU economy; data that absolutely must push us to seasonally adjust and diversify visitor flows to make the most of all the potential of our territory and reflect on the role of LPT. Tourism is a central element in the development of all regions of Italy and LPT has always been the enabling factor of economic dynamics, especially tourism. There were 174 million Italian tourists and 164 million foreign tourists who visited Italy in the first nine months of 2022 (ISTAT). These are almost pre-Covid values, considering that during 2019 the Italian tourist activity had achieved an absolute record: 131.4 million arrivals and 436.7 million presences in the Italian accommodation network”.
The President of ASSTRA then concluded speaking of MaaS (Mobility as a Service): “The contribution of technology and digital technology for increasingly flexible, widespread, effective and efficient mobility services is a crucial point at the heart of the ASSTRA associative system. In the coming months we will face important challenges: the MaaS (Mobility as a Service) approach can be the key to designing and building digitized integrated and sustainable transport service hubs, new nodes of a network serving businesses and local economies. MaaS represents, today, a completely new mobility, which puts the citizen-customer at the center and offers great potential for the entire public transport sector and related industries, all to be exploited. An extraordinary opportunity not only for LPT companies, but above all for the development and quality of life of the territories as it is able to expand access to sustainable mobility services, capable of reducing negative externalities in social, environmental and economic terms . Local public transport companies are in the ideal condition to seize the opportunities of the new mobility and new work organization models; they have always assumed responsibility in terms of continuity and capillarity of the safety service and have the mission of ensuring the constitutional right to mobility. MaaS is in fact a business and governance model that varies according to the characteristics of the territory and the demand for services. The great knowledge of the market and of the mobility systems therefore makes the companies adhering to ASSTRA ideal candidates to be operators of TPL services and MaaS integrator/operator at the same time; the interface of the range of sustainable mobility services with the citizen-customer”.