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Good Practices

City

Marche, Italy

Region

Central Europe

Audience

Theme

Aspect

12.2 Share results and lessons learned

Context

Marche is one of the twenty regions of Italy. The region is located in the Central area of the country and its capital is Ancona. It has total population of 1,541,692 people and it includes five provinces and 239 municipalities. Marche was a part of Poly-SUMP project, developing Polycentric Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans, that aims to develop a sustainable mobility planning methodology in polycentric regions – areas characterised by several centres, where services and goods, and therefore transport needs, are scattered in different towns.

Activity description

Marche Region, as partner of TWIST Project, realized for one year a pilot project on inter-urban public transport along the mountain territories of the Alto Maceratese. The territories involved in the project are mostly represented by weaker social groups (90% of the public transport’s users) such as elderly. After the conclusion of TWIST project, the local transport company CONTRAM adopted the DRT System for the urban service (integrating the the conventional service) of Camerino City and extra – urban lines in the Province of Macerata. The flexible transport’s service is still active and it’s also been extended to the Camerino’s University and other internal mountain area. The DRT System is based on a call center, using a toll-free number answered by an employee. Inside the vehicles, brochures illustrating the timetables for all the routes are distributed. In order to heighten awareness, a brochure has been sent to families in the rural areas. The buses are equipped with a system for tracking and for communicating with the operating headquarters, by means of GPRS/UMTS technology.

Lessons learnt

The local DRT system experience demonstrated that such modality can be a flexible and adaptable transport systems to unexpected situation or change in mobility patterns. Inpired by Marche Region experience with TWIST project, two TRAM Project Partners (Regional Ministry of Public Works and Housing of Andalusia from Spain and Bleckinge Region form Swedish) are evaluating to develop a DEMAND RESPONSIVE TRANSPORT SYSTEM in their territories within the TRAM Project – Phase 2.

Costs

According to CONTRAM experience, the extra cost of a DRT system (mainly related to employees working in the booking-management center) can be supported merging it on a wide public transport network able to guarantee a positive balance. The main objective remains anyway to guarantee a social service.