GO-Mobility

A year of data, a year of AI:

mobility prospects

For urban mobility, 2023 was a year of recovery: the latest report from the MIT Mobility Trends Observatory shows that almost all modes of transport have recovered to 2019 demand levels, in some cases even exceeding pre-pandemic levels. Unfortunately, there is one exception: public transport passengers, both rail and road, still show a deficit of between 12% and 21% compared to 2019.

Looking at the details, we see that highway and air traffic have essentially returned to 2019 levels (with slight increases of 1% and 4%, respectively). Maritime transport is the sector that has experienced the most noticeable recovery, especially in terms of ferry passengers (+25%).

Once again, it is public commuter transport that has not yet recovered from the pandemic: demand for Trenitalia’s regional rail transport is still below 2019 levels, as is the number of passengers using local public transport by road. The figures only change when we look at high-speed (+7%) and long-distance routes (Intercity/Intercity Notte +9%).

The difficult restart of the sector is also a symptom of administrations bogged down in the race for PNRR funds. The whole PNRR affair is of interest precisely because it highlights the major weaknesses accumulated by our country: from the lack of an up-to-date debate on the new technologies available to the lack of skills in public administrations. Managing to implement in four years the infrastructure that has been designed, debated, modified, and then returned to its original form for decades is more of an impossible mission than a PNRR mission. Often, indeed almost always, the manager and official of the administrations are left alone, and few administrations have managed to attract fresh skills and resources to deal with the complex approval processes for public works. While the PNRR works are being completed, we need to think about and implement a reform of local public transport to address the major issues that, even with new works and infrastructure, make the current local public transport system fragile and not very resilient. Yet it is precisely from expertise that the future of sustainable mobility can start again: with the advent of generative AI, we expect to see a number of impacts on mobility services, first and foremost MaaS. From the first experiment with the advanced chatbot ‘NIC-O’ offered by the public transport company in Bari, it is easy to imagine how, in the coming years, GPT chatbots will be the main interfaces for transport operators, guiding users step by step through the various mobility services. Not only that, but the activities of local administrations will also change. In fact, data collection and analysis to monitor the effects of the mobility of PNRR and PUMS works will be more necessary than ever in terms of accountability: that is, it will be necessary to explain the effects of the choices and efforts made. But to develop this type of service, it is necessary to invest in terms of skills, data, and governance capabilities. After a year of familiarization with AI and concrete experiments in several areas of our work, our reflections on the past year converge on how 2024 could (and should) be an opportunity to become aware of the weaknesses of the Italian system (in terms of transport, governance, investment, and distribution of skills) and gradually try to overcome them in order to keep pace with the major changes we expect to see in mobility in the coming years.

FerPress is a news agency specializing in railways, local public transport, and logistics. The daily news service was launched in 2010 with the aim of reporting on the major changes that the sector is undergoing, but also on the many events, large and small, that are of direct interest to those working in the field. The newspaper is produced entirely by Ferpress srl, a company that offers strategic consulting, press office, institutional relations, and parliamentary monitoring services.