Piacenza launches on-demand public night transport

Located about 70 kilometers south of Milan, and just over an hour's drive away from the Lombardy capital, Piacenza is an important historic city in the Emilia-Romagna region. It’s an ideal base for exploring other cities in the region, and famous for its wide range of food and wine services. Now, it will also become known for offering an innovative, fully flexible, on-demand night bus service that allows citizens to travel faster, more conveniently, and safely at night.

Until now, the city did not have any public transport options for passengers traveling outside of daytime schedules. Now, all that has changed thanks to local transport authority Tempi Agenzia, which has brought Shotl's Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) technology to four vehicles from different public transport operators that started offering the service on May 13th, 2022.

The service covers the entire urban area of over 40 km2. Citizens have more than 360 virtual stops to choose from to select pick-up and drop-off locations for city trips, which can be booked through Shotl’s white-label app Tuobus app (available for Android and iOs). The operation also caters to people with reduced mobility as one of the vehicles has capacity for disabled passengers. So the services combine two successful Shotl use cases: night transport and paratransit.

Tuobus was launched on May 4th at a public event attended by local authorities including the Mayor, Ms. Patrizia Barbieri, the Councilor for Mobility, Mr. Paolo Mancioppi, and Tempi Agenzia’s sole administrator, Mr. Paolo Garetti. Mayor Barbieri declared, "With this service, we are attending to the mobility-related requests and needs of the population, and complementing the traditional stops of urban transport lines.” Mr. Macioppi added, “This is one more step by the administration for the improvement of public transport after years of inaction. All without any burdening costs, and thanks to great teamwork."

Mr. Garetti highlighted that journeys can be booked up to 15 days in advance through the app. He also noted that Piacenza is achieving excellent standards by adopting innovative on-demand technology for its public transport network, a feature that few cities in Italy can boast.

Piacenza’s on-demand night bus will run daily from 8:30 p.m. to midnight and until 1:00 a.m. on weekends, stopping only during the holiday season from July 1st to September 12th.