Piacenza launches on-demand public night transport
The Italian city of Piacenza, capital of the province of the same name in the Emilia-Romagna region, launches a new on-demand night bus service, successfully adopting smart city technology and mobility.
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. In May 2022 it also launched an innovative, fully flexible, on-demand night bus service that let citizens to travel faster, more conveniently, and safely at night.
Until 2022, the city did not have any public transport options for passengers traveling outside of daytime schedules. That changed thanks to local transport authority Tempi Agenzia, which 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.
At launch, the service covered the entire urban area of over 40 km2. Citizens had more than 360 virtual stops to choose from to select pick-up and drop-off locations for city trips, which could be booked through Shotl’s white-label app Tuobus app (available for Android and iOs). The operation also catered to people with reduced mobility as one of the vehicles had capacity for disabled passengers. So the services combined 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 could be booked up to 15 days in advance through the app. He also noted that Piacenza was achieving excellent standards by adopting innovative on-demand technology for its public transport network, a feature that few cities in Italy could boast.
In 2022, Piacenza’s on-demand night bus was scheduled to 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.
