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With the drafting of the Regional Integrated Transport Plan 2035 (PRIT 2035), the Abruzzo Region aligns its strategic planning action in the sectors of passenger mobility and freight transport and logistics with the most recent guidelines of the European Union. PRIT 2035 constitutes, in fact, the instrument of “Complete Planning at the appropriate level” foreseen by Regulation (EC) 1060/21 as an enabling condition for access to European funds in order to achieve the objectives of the new European Cohesion Policy 2021 – 2027. Specifically, reference is made to:
- strategic objective 3, “a more connected Europe through enhanced mobility” set by the new Cohesion Policy;
- specific objectives:
- “developing a climate-resilient, intelligent, safe, sustainable and intermodal TEN-T network”
- “developing and enhancing intelligent, intermodal, climate-resilient and sustainable local, regional and national mobility, improving access to the TEN-T network and cross-border mobility”.
In particular, PRIT 2035 must contribute to achieving the objectives set by the European Green Deal and the new Strategy for sustainable and intelligent mobility, accompanied by an action plan that establishes a roadmap in line with the climate objective that aims for a 90% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Also at the European level, PRIT 2035 pursues the objective set by the EU’s “Vision Zero” of eliminating the number of road deaths in the EU by 2050 and its medium-term objective of reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries by 50% by 2030. Similarly, at the national level, PRIT 2035 must align with the objectives of the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan 2021 – 2030 (PNIEC), the National Energy Transition Plan (PTE), to whose achievement the package of interventions foreseen in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan concerning the Abruzzo Region will offer a significant contribution.
The Regional Integrated Transport Plan 2035 is structured according to a process that starts from an in-depth analysis of the Abruzzo region’s territory and socio-economic reality, the internal critical issues of the transport sector, and the external critical issues (negative externalities) that the transport sector generates on the environment, the territory, citizens, and visitors.
The structure of the Plan document has pursued an approach aimed at first guiding the understanding of the dynamics affecting the regional territory in its various areas, in order to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis) that characterize the regional transport system.
The demographic structure and its evolutionary trends provide useful information to identify the needs of the Abruzzo residents at the different time horizons of the Plan and the first solid basis on which to build the knowledge part of the Plan. From the demographic structure, we move on to the analysis of the Abruzzo mobility and transport system, which follows a logic of overlapping levels, first analyzing the long-range connections along and towards the national and community-level communication axes. In this context, the Plan highlights the issue of accessibility to these axes, consisting of highways and AV/AC railway lines, both along the coast and on the internal axis of the Pescara-Rome route. The theme of the TEN-T Corridor Network develops from the recent revision of the European Regulation, which has included the Adriatic axis within the community interest corridors. The analysis covers all mobility sectors, from rail transport to air transport, intersecting the current infrastructural structure with the already planned interventions that contribute to defining the four scenarios from which the Plan starts: the Current Scenario, the Reference Scenario, the Programmatic Reference Scenario, and the Planned Project Scenario.
Following the same logic as the infrastructure network, the structure of collective transport services and rolling stock in service and planned acquisition is analyzed.
The analysis of the demand that engages the regional transport system is introduced through the analysis of matrices obtained from mobile phone Big Data, validated by flow data collected on the regional multimodal network. These matrices provide further information for the reconstruction of mobility in the regional context and allow the use of simulation software to spatially identify the most used corridors, critical areas, and, above all, these data provide a fundamental element to quantify the potential of the interventions planned in the various scenarios to achieve the Plan’s objectives in coherence with national and community guidelines, especially in terms of reducing and mitigating the negative externalities of the transport sector. The externalities are classified into three categories: accidents, pollutant emissions, and air quality.
To achieve these objectives, the PRIT develops five General Strategies that guide the definition of the Plan’s interventions. These interventions are described starting from those affecting the railway network, which also assumes the role of the founding structure of the Abruzzo public transport backbone, analyzing first the infrastructure network and then the project operating model according to two main corridors:
- The Adriatic corridor and related lines
- The transversal Rome-Pescara corridor and related lines
The Abruzzo railway network is considered by the Plan in an intermodal system logic to foster synergies between the railway system and road systems, understood both as public and private car transport and sustainable last-mile mobility with interventions to strengthen the short and medium-range cycling network and related support infrastructures (bicycle stations).
These interventions contribute to achieving the targets for reducing pollutant emissions and social costs related to road accidents through the promotion of modal shift from private motorized vehicles to alternative and low environmental impact means such as public transport and active mobility. Alongside the modal shift, the plan identifies, in the context of transport digitalization and decarbonization policies, other interventions to achieve the overarching objectives and targets.
Finally, other interventions concern tourist mobility linked to the territorial peculiarities of an area that lends itself to cycle tourism and the activation of tourist railway lines in areas of greater naturalistic value.
Regarding Cycling Mobility, this Plan document has recomposed and harmonized the regional cycling network scenario, in the main corridors as well as in the National references, and in the tourist itineraries whose overall reading, in light of the Intermodal Nodes and Mobility Centers identified by the Plan, determines the optimal condition for the development and implementation of the regional network.
The Plan also addresses the issue of freight transport and logistics by proposing interventions related to freight transport by rail, port facilities, and road-rail intermodality as an economic driver and as a lever to raise the current modal share of sustainable, more efficient, and effective transport modes.
The Plan completes its time horizon in 2035, but aims to outline a subsequent evolutionary scenario so that the strategies and visions of the Plan can take into account the configuration towards which the Abruzzo transport system should tend even beyond 2035.
The Plan measures the impact on the modal share of public transport resulting from the progressive entry into operation of the speed-enhancing interventions planned on the Adriatic line and the Pescara-Rome line, including their respective feeder lines, and the implementation of the related regional rail transport operating models. In both cases, the rail interventions are complemented by new planned interventions for some decarbonized Bus Rapid Transit lines that complete the configuration of the regional public transport backbone network.
Synthesis of modeling assessments
It is interesting to note how the amplification of the benefits of this infrastructural offer and service provision is linked to interventions to improve intermodality and shared mobility services on the so-called last mile, both aimed at making collective transport more competitive compared to private car use.
The last scenario considered aims to highlight the potential conflict that arises with the implementation of all the already planned road interventions, which lead to a contraction of the public transport modal share. It should be noted, however, in the specific case of the Abruzzo region, that this contraction is decidedly contained and that some of these interventions are aimed at improving the conditions of travel and safety of the network as well as avoiding improper use of the highway by local flows.
The Plan measures the benefits resulting from the enhancement of the public transport network, viewed in their reflections on the functioning of the various components of the regional road network.
Two phenomena appear particularly evident:
- A reduction in the use of the highway network to the advantage of extra-urban roads. This is due to the combined effect of an enhanced public transport offer on the coastal axis and the implementation of interventions to strengthen and organize new roads on the retro-coastal corridor, avoiding routes between valley systems perpendicular to the coast that are currently forced to use the A14 highway.
- A significant reduction in traffic flows on the urban roads of the main centers, due exclusively to the enhancement of the regional local public transport backbone network, consisting of the regional railway transport and the extra-urban Bus Rapid Transit lines provided for by PRIT 2035.
In partnership with PTS Clas