Turin: guest of honour at the 2012 European Mobility Exhibition

The City of Turin and its GTT transport network will be guests of honour at the next European Mobility Exhibition. In the long term, the Italian city has set itself the goal of public transport accounting for 50% of all travel by encouraging intermodal transport.

The City of Turin has developed an overall policy designed to make public transport more attractive than private vehicles (in terms of journey times, routes and economic efficiency) and make the city district sustainably accessible, thus encouraging residents to change their travel habits.

2011 marked a major milestone for this policy, with the approval of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan. This includes social, economic and environmental aspects, as recommended by the European Union. The plan involves carrying out major works, including the gradual construction of additional metro lines and routing railway lines underground.

At the same time, the City is planning to develop interchanges between the various urban public transport systems, the regional rail network and the inter-urban road transport network, using transport nodes. These will be located at strategic points such as stations and close to the ring roads, so as to encourage the use of park and ride facilities.

Intermodality: the key to a high-performance network

At the same time, a raft of measures is being introduced to encourage “alternative mobility”: traditional and innovative transport systems of all kinds offering sustainable modes of travel. These include “zero impact” mobility (such as walking and cycling), low-impact transport (electric cars, hybrid vehicles, etc.) and collective use of cars (car-pooling and car-sharing).

To preserve air quality and gradually reduce the presence of cars, the City is implementing a number of plans: restricting traffic, upgrading its public and private transport vehicles (with the retirement of high-polluting Euro 0 category vehicles), extending the area covered by car parking charges so as to restructure and improve public space, building new cycle tracks and car parks near train and metro stations, helping to organise company travel plans, and so on.

Future projects include the extension of telematic traffic control and management systems to cut congestion, improving traffic flow, enhancing road safety and ensuring the punctuality of public transport.

Alongside these policies, Turin is also actively working to improve freight transport, with the creation of urban shipping hubs for the “last mile” of final delivery, at specific times of the day, and using more environmentally-friendly modes of transport in the city centre.

(c) GTT