Made in Italy initiatives for sustainable mobility
Initiatives to promote sustainable mobility are also multiplying in Italy. Among the many, two in particular caught our attention. One involving large cities and the other a provincial area.
In Rome, Milan and Naples, an app is being piloted to encourage citizens not to use cars. The project, presented in recent days at the Green&Blue festival organized by the daily newspaper La Repubblica, thanks to technology will make it possible to buy metro and bus tickets in the same app, call and pay for cabs, rent electric bikes and scooters, as well as use the car sharing service. The same app will provide traffic information, establishing better means and routes, and show in black and white that it is cheaper to use alternative means than the private car.
Instead, in 18 municipalities in the Treviso hinterland, including the capital, a "Bike to work" project has already started, which also directly involves trade associations. Here those who choose to go from home to work on foot, by bicycle or by an electric vehicle alternative to the car are rewarded with shopping vouchers. One must register in an app, which calculates through Google Maps the routes and kilometers incurred by those who join the initiative: each kilometer earns 20 points, which is equivalent to 0.25 euros.
A maximum of 200 points can be accumulated per day, meaning you have to pedal ten kilometers. But the app also keeps track of excess points, verifying actual CO2 emissions savings and racking up points for a sweepstakes raffling off an electric mini car.
There is no shortage of ideas. But how are citizens embracing them? In the Treviso area, where the project kicked off in early June, it was already booming in the first few days with registrations to the Eco Active app. Beware, however: the capital of the Marca trevigiana region-which will also be among the four finalist cities (the only Italian one) for 2025 in the European Green Leaf Award-is not immune to long-standing, 20-year-old discussions about the need to pedestrianize the historic center. Moreover, it is very small. But the car, it is known, always remains a difficult convenience to eliminate from daily habits. In Milan already the introduction of the speed limit had triggered not a few controversies, and in Rome there was a real wave of protests against the enlargement of the green limited traffic zone. So much so that those administering the capital were forced to reshape their decisions. Which says a lot about the potential success of the new app. All that remains is to wait.
