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Drafting services for the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan of the Bologna metropolitan area (PUMS Metro-Bo), the General Urban Traffic Plan (PGTU) of Bologna, and the Sustainable Urban Logistics Plan (PULS), including SEA for all plans.
The PUMS was developed with a shared and participatory approach (involving 6,000 citizens, 90 stakeholders, 45 meetings and workshops) starting from the definition of general and specific objectives: Accessibility, Climate protection, Air quality, Road safety, Livability, and Quality of life.
The most important and ambitious quantitative goal is derived from the Paris Agreement COP21 and concerns a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030. This translates into aiming for a 28% reduction in car traffic over 10 years (12% will be attributable to the renewal of the vehicle fleet), bringing the modal share of cars from 57% to 41% on a metropolitan scale, and from 42% to 22% in Bologna.
Additionally, through a participatory process, the priorities for citizens and stakeholders were identified, highlighting the need for a more efficient public transport system (TPL), better air quality, and increased road safety.
The drafting process was characterized by the following key elements:
– Development of the content in strong synergy with the political and technical representatives of the involved administrations, who were gathered in a Drafting Committee composed of about 15-20 representatives, with weekly meetings. The consultants provided a multidisciplinary team that included 30 professionals and 5 project managers dedicated to key topics.
– Implementation of a particularly robust multimodal simulation model to estimate the effectiveness of the plan’s measures at various future time horizons and to identify potential critical issues/opportunities.
– Use and analysis of mobility demand not only from targeted survey campaigns but also, and especially, from various sets of Big Data: FCD (floating car data from black boxes held by the consultant) for the vehicular component, AVM data on public transport, and crowd-sourced data for pedestrian and cycling mobility.
– Integration of communication into the drafting process of the Plan.
The Plan was developed through macro-components of mobility, each of which was detailed at a strategic and operational level by identifying lines of intervention and the related resources.
PEDESTRIAN MOBILITY
The strategies proposed by the PUMS concern Universal Accessibility (a barrier-free city, a network of universally accessible routes, orientation for the disabled), the Quality and Efficiency of pedestrian mobility at Metropolitan Public Transport (TPM) nodes, Safety and Development of Pedestrian Areas, and Pedestrian Mobility Education. Methodologically, it was decided to activate continuous planning of pedestrian mobility through extensive collaboration with Disability Managers, the promotion of Home-School mobility, and Wayfinding.
CYCLING MOBILITY – METROPOLITAN BICIPLAN
The PUMS identified several measures, primarily the creation of a Multilevel Metropolitan Backbone Network (Metropolitan Biciplan), which aims to support significant structured movements with a cycling network for daily mobility and a metropolitan cycling tourism network for national and international tourism, providing almost 1,000 km of routes (246 of which are existing). Detailed interventions are also planned to Promote widespread cycling, facilitate coexistence between cyclists and other road users, redesign road space to increase safety along cycling routes, implement (infrastructure and services) to promote intermodality with other modes of transport, support structures and services, particularly to promote electric and shared cycling, and policies to develop cycling mobility education.
SHARED SPACE
In terms of vehicular mobility, a decisive aspect concerns the transition from viewing the road as contested space to shared space, considering all mobility components on the road: vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, and public transport, overcoming the boundaries of excessively “sectorized” planning in favor of achieving plan targets.
A key element concerns Road Safety, for which the revolutionary “City 30” paradigm is introduced (for Bologna and main municipalities): the entire network will be 30 km/h, with exceptions only for main axes at 50/70 km/h. Specific measures also concern the evolution of LTZs based on environmental criteria and the creation of a “Green Area” in Bologna. It was also decided not to build new metropolitan roads unless already included in planning tools and consistent with PUMS principles, activating the Redevelopment of existing roads with a focus on safety, space quality, and landscape integration, as well as reducing the competitiveness of private transport with Metropolitan Railway Service lines.
METROPOLITAN PUBLIC TRANSPORT (MPT)
A key element of the PUMS is the new concept of Metropolitan Public Transport (TPM), a connected and integrated backbone network that surpasses the concept of urban, suburban, and extra-urban networks, integrating existing and planned networks and services, based on the following lines of intervention:
– Extended multimodal fare integration across the entire TPM network.
– Multimodal infomobility system.
– Enhancement of the SFM through: peak frequency of 15 minutes at some main stations and implementation of instrumental (rolling stock enhancement) and infrastructural interventions.
– Enhancement of the transport capacity and attractiveness of Bologna’s urban backbone network through the introduction of tram technology.
– Collective transport network based on rendezvous (schedule synchronization) between backbone network services (SFM and Tram for rapid distribution in Bologna) and complementary and integrative networks.
– Mobility Centers intended as infrastructurally and technologically equipped spaces dedicated to the use of “Mobility as a Service” (MaaS) at the main nodes of the metropolitan and urban multimodal network.
In collaboration with Airis, ISFORT and GO-Mobility