From 1999 up to now, the city of Genoa decided to implement coordinated strategies to reduce the impact of transport and mobility systems in the urban centre of Genoa. In order to achieve this target, the Municipality of Genoa has been carrying out some “traffic-environment” integrated politics, aiming at protecting the urban environment and introducing effective environmental sustainability measures, which are able to develop a new awareness of sustainable urban mobility.

In 1999 the main urban problem in Genoa was the deterioration of the environment in the centre of Genoa where continuous and increasing overcoming of the maximum permitted levels of environmental pollutants were recorded, mainly due to the traffic flows in the central areas and to the pollutants produced by them.

A lot of interventions on different aspects of mobility were so carried out, involving the essential tools of mobility in an integrated plan. The essential objective was to reduce drastically the private traffic in the urban centre and lower the surveyed pollution.

The first objective would have been therefore a more rational transport modal split in favour of low environmental impact means, in order to create a greater social utility.

The public administration put into action a sequence of mobility strategies like:

• The access’ restriction to the central urban area and road pricing strategies
• The strengthening and improvement of public transport service
• A sustainable plan for freights deliveries in urban centre
• Traffic management and control
• Management strategies of mobility demand

Such mobility politics are here briefly synthesized:

• The access restriction in the central urban area represents an essential tool of Urban Traffic Plan. The urban traffic plan defines limited transit areas and special park areas; it also introduces reserved lanes for public transport means. Besides, the experimentation of road pricing in the urban centre contributed to know better traffic flows crossing the central area and to evaluate the resistance of the citizens to this new "toll”.
• The strengthening of local public transport is based on the development of surface railway service in the urban area and the extension of the subway. Also the new experiences of demand responsive transport service and of collective taxi are instruments of particular interest. Public Transport Company has put into action a plan of interventions, in order to generate economic improvement that is leading to an increase in efficiency, even if service costs are however relevant.
• The new distribution freight plan improved the attractiveness of the urban centre, also the test of no emission vehicles reduced the concentration of smokes in this area and it calmed the traffic flows in the historical centre.
• The development and application of new data entry technology and remote control of semaphoric system is the base of an integrated way of planning public and private mobility.
• The mobility management uses already tested systems, together with new initiatives such as car sharing and car-pooling. Considering mobility plan, also the definition of safe routes and the extension of pedestrian areas are important tools to increase the use of low/no pollutant transport means.

Today the results of these mobility politics are remarkable: the reduction of pollutants and the modal split are evident consequences of these new measures; they are a clear signal of the beginning of turning point time in Genoa mobility administration.

The data gathered with the Road Pricing system (installed into the central area) well explain the good results achieved: the private traffic decreases with a remarkable intensity and public transport increase in the same proportion. So the global modal split in urban centre of Genoa changed radically from 1999 to 2002.

Considering the important result achieved, the Municipal Administration decided to continue to extend the benefits of this politics defining a global project. The objective is to establish a new integrated transport planning and control system. This mobility project should reinforce the positive experience tested in the urban centre and it also represents an instrument to rationalize and improve all the planning transport politics interventions in the whole metropolitan area of Genoa.

The new aim will be the improvement of mobility integration of all transport modalities, the development and rationalization of the transport net, a better access to the transport services and at least the control and reduction of pollutants emissions. All these aspects create the right condition to redefine clearly, not only transport politics but also the whole organization of urban mobility.

The public administration gives the essential politic inputs, while a technical institution (Agency) plans and acts according to these instructions, granting an organized system to all users and citizens. The planning and definition of a traffic plan can’t be an isolated process and action but it must involve in a combined process the all the aspects related to urban mobility, as a shared mobility plan. (Art. 22, L. 340 /2000)

The analysis of the governance’s model of the Genoese mobility, considers the actual situation, the past e and what is overlooks till the constitution of the agency with the global division between the public operator and the transport Agency.

To our intention is possible to define briefly the stakeholders and actors involved in the government scheme of the mobility in Genoa analysing what was, are and will be the relations and function between them in this period characterized by the national reform of PT. In the past model there is a lack of cohesion in the relationships among the different actors and stakeholders. The agency model actually discussed in Genoa creates a new point of coordination among the involved subjects for a unitary system to plan and regulate all the mobility functions in a organic way.

The applied governance model changed from a not always co-ordinated system with multiple relationships:

To a more organic system in which the mobility decisions linked to private and public transport are coordinated and planned by a main institution with the technical competence necessary to govern all the aspect related to the mobility:

Finally it will develop a strategic plan to transform based on the following main issues:

• Division between politics, technical and planning and administration functions (P.A.; Agency; Management)
• All the technical aspects of the metropolitan mobility (public and private) in an only public interlocutor will be joined in only one institution.
• Coordination between environmental and transport politics
• Development of a new relationship between citizens/users to reduce the conflicts and to satisfy all the social exigencies to be informed and to have the chance to communicate their own needs.

The new mobility governance system in Genoa

1. Involved subjects
2. The functions carried out in the new mobility system
3. The Great intervention’s areas in the mobility government
4. A global strategic vision about mobility: remarkable issues

Involved subjects

Here are listed all the subjects directly involved in the governance transport model.

In the following division is relevant to stress out the role of citizens and public transport users, who have to be directly involved like association in the decisional process of the urban mobility system. So they well represent the whole individual organized interests of the citizen, related to transport and mobility.

The functions carried out in the new mobility system

Urban Mobility Plan and transit Department

Mission:

• Local public Transport national reform (D.lgs. 422/97, 400/99)
• Transport systems reorganization and infrastructures improving
• Development of a coordinated strategy to improve the access to the social, economic and productive structures of the municipality of Genoa
• Planning, regulation and control of the road traffic, of the transport infrastructures and of the public and private transport systems.

Transport Agency

Mission:

• Coordination and management of all the functions linked to public and private mobility in only one technical entity.
• Mobility management and all the activity linked to mobility demand
• Ownership, management and exploitation of the local public transport infrastructures.
• Local public Transport planning and administration.
• Organization of all the other Mobility services like car sharing/car pooling.
• Parking management

Public administrations

Mission:

All these Public administrations define the transport policies with respect to their own competence and responsibility. They give the impulse to coordinate activities and to integrate the different transport modalities in the urban area of Genoa, choosing the objectives and priorities.

• Liguria region
• Province of Genoa
• Municipality of Genoa

Public Transport Operators

Mission:

• AMT is the manager of the TPL service in the urban area of Genoa (only after the property and essential transport infrastructures division and when a portion between 40 and 49% of capital stock will sold)
• ALI and TIGULLIO for the connection between the wider metropolitan area of Genoa and the urban area
• Assignment of the service through competition and redefinition of the contractual relationship
• Trenitalia manages the railway transport in the local area.

The Great intervention’s areas in the mobility government.

Local public transport

• Linear applications of the law by decree Burlando, which introduced the privatisation, the sale of capital stock portion to privates and the market liberalization based on a controlled competition.
• Genoa was the first among the major Italian public transport company to be privatised, changing from government-owned industry to a joint-stock company.
• Sale of a share to a private partner in order to enforce all the issue established by the law of transport reform.
• Constitution of an Agency with all the functions and competences which have been up to now under the responsibility of Municipality and Province of Genoa. The agency has the infrastructures ownership, while the public transport operator keep the ownership of all the transport means.
• The tariff and modal integration are the main items in the process of reorganization of urban and extra-urban net transport.
• The agency develops a complex of abilities and capacities, to grant a better control of all transport service, which is carried out by the operators.

Private Transport

• Introduction of actions aimed at reducing the individual transport use through: limitation of entries, payment of access and parks localized in the urban area, extended intervention of traffic calming; street specialization and realization of reserved lanes to Public Transport.
• To Manage private mobility demand, with particular attention to the systematic home-work trips.
• Pedestrian mobility promotion and action; realization of safe routes; reorganization of transport net in the urban centre to increase accessibility,
• Spread of transport information, with different tools, over all the strategic access points to the city.
• Integration among all the different transport modalities.

A global strategic vision about mobility: remarkable issues

To define any strategic mobility project it’s relevant starting from the guidelines outlined in National transport plan (Piano Generale dei Trasporti) which stress out the priority to local mobility government:

1. The fulfilment and development of the mobility needs;
2. The environment recovery;
3. The transport safety;
4. Service quality;
5. Economic recovery of public transport companies;
6. Transport economic efficiency.

In order to achieve these objectives, the essential key elements are:

• Synergy among Public administration to organize transport system.
• The Integration level (tariff, net integration, timetables)
• Information system and meeting point information for the citizens/users
• Coordination between mobility and environmental politics.