tickets and smart working weigh dearly – Corriere.it

After the collapse in the two-year period 2020-2021 in the number of passengers who used local and regional public transport, even in 2022 the demand for mobility was still below pre-Covid levels. This was reported by the research office of Asstra – the national association of regional and local public transport companies in Italy – which found an estimated loss of demand, compared to 2019, equal to -21% for 2022 and -12% for 2023. There is no sustainable mobility without a strong local public transport system, a system of over 930 companies that move over 15 million people every day. Asstra highlights it, on the occasion of the national conference in Rome. Covid-19 and the new transport services required, the convergence between ecological transition and digitization and, following the Ukrainian conflict, the energy crisis and inflation, require targeted interventions to promote the competitiveness of the sector, the stability of the regulatory framework and the certainty of the economic resources available, reads a note.

The smart working effect

With the structural introduction of smart working – underlines the president of Asstra Andrea Gibelli – we have noticed a change in the relationship with travel, with the car and with public transport. On the one hand it would have been easier, perhaps, to stop the public service out of respect for competitiveness, but we are well aware that the country would have collapsed. Our goal – concludes Gibelli – must be to make travel compatible with situational needs, with national emergencies and with everyday working life and beyond. A modern country must therefore focus on the key principles that we have listed in our report: certain and shared rules at the community level, sustainable resources and strong and widespread essential services.

Budgets in the red, ticket prices increase

The collapse of passengers has led to a proportional drop in traffic revenues, compromising the economic and financial balance of companies and public transport service contracts. The current availability of the lost revenue fund – underlines Asstra in the document presented on the occasion of the XVII national conference – is not sufficient to ensure coverage of the losses that the sector recorded in 2021 and in the first months of 2022. Despite a further intervention carried out under the 2023 budget law, the requirement to cover the lost revenues of 2021 amounts to 500 million euros and a further 300 million euros for 2022. Furthermore, the exponential growth in the prices of raw materials, and in particular of fuel and electricity, has been added to the effects of Covid. For 2022, the research office estimates higher costs for fuel (diesel and methane) of over 320 million euros and for electricity in the second quarter of 2020 alone, at over 160 million euros. All increases that have begun to affect the cost of tickets and season tickets for citizens

The proposals

The association therefore proposes a regulatory intervention that eliminates any lack of homogeneity of the national regulatory framework with respect to the Community sector legislation, the revision of the Consolidated Law on investee companies and of the national provisions on state inter-regional services. It also calls for automatic indexing mechanisms of the National Transport Fund; additional structural injection of operating account resources to support and accompany the huge and extraordinary investments and finance the new local public transport services; acceleration of payment processes; full coverage of lost Covid-19 revenues for 2021 and 2022 and structural and automatic interventions to cover higher energy costs; full application of standard costs taking into account technological innovations, new planning objectives and different cost dynamics; criteria for automatic updating of tariffs in service contracts and greater tariff flexibility in favor of businesses; incentives for the dissemination of electronic ticketing systems and the digitization of payments to make local public transport more attractive and innovative and stem the growing phenomenon of fare evasion.

sustainability

For innovation, the request for a convergence towards an energy transition is always and in any case aimed at the purchase of alternative fuel vehicles, but a more adequate graduality, in order to take into account the different realities and territorial needs, the real and timely implementation of necessary investments and reconcile the objectives of reducing emissions and social, with the economic sustainability of companies.