GECO - Sustainability virtual italian fair
In this blog, we often discuss mobility, particularly sustainable and soft mobility. We care about this issue and its implication, which is why we dedicated a whole thematic area of the second edition of GECO Expo to it. As is our custom, we have chosen to tackle this particular topic by talking to leading experts, in order to share interesting and useful perspectives on the matter. Today, we discuss mobility with Rossella Panero, president of TTS ITALIA.
In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, TTS Italia conducted a survey at national and international level, involving TTS Italia members and European and non-European ITS associations, focusing on two main areas: the impact of the pandemic on society and mobility and the role of technological innovation.
Among the main findings of the survey: people working from home had a positive impact on the environment and on mobility, with a decrease in travel between home and work and a consequent reshaping of peak hours. A drastic decrease in the use of public transport services in favour of private traffic. Sharing mobility was penalised due to difficulties in ensuring adequate sanitation.
Moreover, there was general agreement on the importance of seizing the opportunity to simplify, dematerialise, digitalise and to enable the widespread adoption of truly smart mobility models in a MaaS (Mobility as a Service) perspective. According to all those interviewed, it is therefore essential to launch a massive digitalisation of mobility to support the recovery of public transport and its integration and interoperability with other services, implementing online booking, electronic ticketing, passenger counting systems, real-time user information services, public transport priority systems, and intelligent traffic management systems throughout the territory.
And I believe that this is the direction in which we are moving, mapping out a clear path ahead. The progress of mobility and transport can no longer be separated from digitalisation in all its forms, and I think Covid has taught us that.
On the basis of current trends and current European and national funding, MaaS will certainly play an increasingly important role, because it is part of the optimisation and digitalisation process I mentioned earlier. However, I think it will be rather unlikely to erase the concept of private/individual transport completely, and in the end this is fine: mobility and transport must be adaptable to the demand and needs of citizens, which in turn are linked to perceptions of safety, comfort and time management.
What will certainly change, and is already changing, is the concept of mobility in general. This is also demonstrated by the change in denomination of some Ministries, which are increasingly focused on sustainability and ecological transition.
In this changing scenario, TTS Italia too felt the need to draw up guidelines for the development of MaaS services in Italy, in order to harmonise a sector that is evolving but, in some respects, is still fragmented.
The value of collaboration between the public and private sectors, and in particular the role of public governance, is a key factor in fostering the development and deployment of new digital MaaS services that are able to deliver consistent benefits to users, market players, the environment and the community as a whole. The MaaS ecosystem may develop along different models, characterised by a different role of the public sector, each with positive and negative aspects. The possibility that the public sector plays the role of MaaS Integrator and enabler, and that the private sector plays the role of MaaS Operator seems particularly interesting. Within such an open ecosystem model, the public sector orchestrates, creates the conditions for enabling the MaaS market, and finally checks that everyone operates in compliance with the rules.
There are cities and regions that have already started MaaS projects on an individual scale, especially in the field of integrated parking management and electronic ticketing. As I said before, however, there is a lack of harmonisation, which I am sure will come with the 'MaaS4Italy' project, a 40 million euro project launched by the Ministry of Innovation, Technology and Digitalisation (MITD) and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility (MIMS), which aims to identify three pilot cities for the implementation of MaaS, followed by seven additional cities. As an association, we are part of the Partnership Table promoted by the two ministries to encourage discussion with stakeholders in the industry, to promote full implementation of MaaS in our country. I believe that this initiative will bring our country in line with the rest of Europe and who knows, maybe even one step ahead.
TTS Italia has always been very attentive to mobility issues, particularly with regard to the application of ITS technologies, a concept that is inevitably linked to sustainability. GECO EXPO combines these two aspects well, so it seemed to us a good opportunity to let people know how much has been done and how much potential can still be developed.
Published on 24-01-2022
