Bus&Go carried 10,000 people in its first two and a half months

An experiment by the Alto Garda municipalities: an on-demand service alongside the classic bus network, with 110 stops across the territory. Young people took to it in the evenings, tourists used it instead of the car they arrived in.

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Operated by

With

Service: Bus&Go
Setting: Alto Garda lake district
Service model: Tourism & seasonal
Season: April to October
Riders: Visitors, young people, residents

The Bus&Go app open in front of a service vehicle in Garda Trentino livery

Results

10,000+

Passengers in 2.5 months

The first season, run as an experiment by the municipal administration.

110+

Stops across Alto Garda

Every bus stop in the territory usable as a pickup or drop-off point.

Apr–Oct

Season two, extended

The pilot became a seven-month service, now also carrying passengers with disabilities.

The challenge

A tourist area where everyone arrives by car

Alto Garda fills with visitors and traffic. Most arrive by private car, and once here they keep using it — for the evening out, for the trip into Riva del Garda, for journeys the classic timetable does not cover at the hours people actually travel.

Every one of those trips that moves onto a public service matters in a territory this constrained. But a visitor staying a week will never learn a local route map — the service has to be obvious from the first use, or it will not be used at all.

2 min

from booking to pickup

30 s

to confirm the offered trip

What we deployed

Bus&Go — a name and a service a visitor recognises immediately

01
A name visitors recognise
Bus&Go was named to echo the APT logo, so tourists see a familiar image.
02
110+ virtual stops
The existing stop network reused as pickup points — no infrastructure built.
03
Now or later
Travel immediately or book ahead; the app recalculates and offers the trip.
04
An accessible vehicle
One of the two vehicles equipped to carry passengers with disabilities.

It complements the classic service, it does not replace it

The traditional timetable is still there and still running. Bus&Go takes the journeys it was never going to serve well — the evening trips, the visitor moving between towns, the stop that is nowhere near a scheduled route.

The app knows where you are. Pick a destination from the 110-plus stops, choose now or later, and it offers a trip — pickup in two minutes, twelve minutes of travel, four minutes on foot at the end. Thirty seconds to confirm.

How on-demand sits beside a fixed network

On site

Young people in the evening, families and visitors — boarding at one of the 110 stops across the territory.
One of two vehicles on the road; the second is equipped to carry passengers with disabilities.
The tablet rebuilds the route as bookings arrive — next drop-off, next pickup, in order.

In the council’s words

Gabriele AndreasiCity councillor, Comune di Arco

Similar challenges

The problem isn’t specific to lakeside resorts

What made Alto Garda hard was not the number of visitors. It was that almost all of them arrive by car and keep using it, for trips the timetable does not cover at the hours people travel — and a visitor staying a week will never learn a local route map.

Coastal towns, mountain resorts and any destination that fills up for a season share that pattern. Where it holds, so does the model: a service named and branded so visitors recognise it at once, stops where they already go, and evening hours the fixed network cannot afford to run.

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