GO-Mobility Editorial Team

Make TPL Great Again

Overcoming the Welfare Approach to Offer a Truly Competitive Service

When discussing public transport, we often encounter a paradox: although almost everyone generally declares themselves in favor of its improvement, in reality, those who use it regularly remain a small minority (8.6% in Italy[1]). Why is there such a universal support in contrast to residual use? According to the Transport Leaders blog, one of the answers lies in the widespread mentality that leads to conceiving public transport as a form of social assistance for those without alternatives, rather than a valid mobility service. This produces a series of biases that limit the competitiveness of the service and fuel car dependency. How can we reverse this vicious cycle? We explain it in this month’s article, using the application of an opposite approach, that of GO-Mobility, as an example.

Public transport as charity? No, thank you

According to the Transport Leaders blog, the failure of public transport lies in the inability to see collective transport systems as a mode of equal dignity to private transport, and instead conceiving them as “an act of charity“: something that is granted to those who cannot afford a private car and who cannot or are no longer able to drive (for example, disabled or elderly people).

This mentality, although it may seem “altruistic” and charitable, actually leads to harmful dynamics that hinder the realization of an efficient and functional public transport system for everyone. Indeed, if public transport is designed as a social assistance service, the result will be a service of “welfare” quality.

The Coverage Trap: Reaching Everyone, Satisfying No One

An example? Prioritizing service coverage (very long lines with many stops) at the expense of speed (frequent lines on a main axis). This approach is known as the “coverage trap“[2]: it indicates a situation where the public transport service tries to cover as many places as possible (maximizing accessibility and service “coverage”) with available resources, distributing them over vast areas. But this leads to a weak service: low frequencies, long travel times, and winding routes (therefore subject to delays).

The result? A system that technically reaches everyone, but serves no one well: a stop near home, but with a bus that passes only twice a day, will hardly be attractive to those who have alternatives. The service will be used mainly by the most vulnerable segments of the population, fueling the stigma of an “welfare service”.

Although the desire to offer extensive territorial coverage is motivated by reasons of equity and inclusion, what is obtained is a poorly competitive service that repels those who have alternatives and traps the rest of the people in a dysfunctional and low-quality service, compromising equity itself and reinforcing car dependency.

Low-income families, in fact, faced with low-quality public transport, are forced to own a car that they can barely afford: according to research by Assoutenti, managing a car in Italy absorbs almost one-fifth of an average income. Translated, this means that on average we use one working day a week to maintain the costs of the car, which according to Assoutenti amount to about €3,360 per year. According to the latest European Commission report on Transport Poverty, 21% of European families at risk of poverty face unsustainable transport costs, compromising opportunities for access to work, education, and health.

The overall result of a welfare approach is therefore contrary to the desired effects. The most equitable and cost-effective public transport system is one that works well enough to eliminate the need to own a car.

Make TPL Great Again: the Ridership-First Approach

What would happen if we reversed the situation? If cities started treating public transport not as a social service, but as an essential infrastructure for innovation and economic competitiveness of territories? If it were designed to compete with cars instead of simply serving those who have no other choice?

The opposite approach to the coverage trap is the one focused on maximizing demand and service use: the ridership-first approach.

What does this mean in practice? Concentrating resources on corridors characterized by high real and potential demand, offering high frequency, direct routes, competitive travel times. Buses every 10-15 minutes on straight and fast routes between main destinations, with the additional help of dedicated lanes and traffic light priority, can truly compete with private cars.

This way, a service is created that is attractive even to those who have alternatives available, generating public support and ticket revenue to reinvest in further improving the service. A well-used and appreciated system, in fact, can justify future expansions, providing greater political support and momentum for further investments, while one that “covers everything” but is poorly used will hardly obtain consensus for further expansions and investments, undermining the economic sustainability of the system.

The GO-Mobility Approach: Reorganizing for Efficiency

As you can imagine, the ridership-first approach is one where data is essential, in order to identify the corridors to be strengthened and the frequencies and routes to be implemented. GO-Mobility has always supported this type of approach, offering reorganization services for existing public transport based on a more efficient use of available resources. The goal is to make public transport competitive compared to private cars, going beyond the home-school function. How?

Network hierarchization: reorganizing the network by focusing resources on strong, frequent, and fast lines, based on multiple levels: main lines, support lines, and completion lines, and defining operational areas with on-demand services in low-demand territories.

Data-driven demand-based planning: the redesign of routes (paths and frequencies) prioritizes coverage of actual flows. This is achieved through advanced demand analysis, mobility scenarios, and territorial clusters reconstructed with a data-fusion approach that draws from traditional sources (Istat commuting matrices, CAWI and CATI surveys) and innovative ones (FCD from vehicle black boxes, mobile phone data).

Service speed and competitiveness: aware that winding and infrequent routes drive passengers away, the objective is to increase commercial speed through direct and optimized routes, dedicated lanes, interchange nodes that facilitate modal integration. Mobility Centers play a key role in this: modal interchange hubs where the line-changing experience becomes fluid and pleasant in an intuitive, serviced, pleasant and accessible environment with various means – park-and-ride facilities, sharing services, bike paths, which also becomes a source of urban revitalization) and time synchronization between lines (“appointment” logic).

Inclusion through efficiency: in this approach, equity is not achieved by reaching everyone with poor service, but by strategically strengthening the most used lines, and compensating with complementary services and personalized on-demand services.

Conclusion

The most inclusive and effective public transport system is one that proves attractive to the entire community, not one that serves the needs of those who have no alternatives. This is why it is necessary to move away from the logic that sees public transport as a cost and not as a value.

“A country is developed not when the poor own cars, but when the rich use public transport and bicycles”
Gustavo Petro, former mayor of Bogotá and current President of Colombia

When public transport becomes an authentic choice for the middle class, it generates passengers, therefore revenue and the political support necessary to expand service to disadvantaged communities. This also happens thanks to the possibility of implementing fare policies that include mobility vouchers, subscriptions and differentiated discounts based on income or other socio-demographic characteristics that guarantee and promote access without undermining the economic sustainability of the entire system.

But be careful: rethinking public transport alone is not enough. Investing in public transport while maintaining the status quo of cars as the privileged means of the road (for example by expanding free parking and highway lanes) is doomed to failure. As the Transport Leaders blog article reminds us, ‘every euro invested in private transport is a euro taken away from public transport, and every development designed for cars is a way to generate additional car trips‘. It is therefore important to remember that in order not to nullify the effects of a good public transport efficiency policy, it is first necessary to review the balance of public spending in favor of collective mobility.

[1] Source: Summary of the 21st Report on Italian mobility, Isfort, 2023 edition.

[2] Giuffrida N., Le Pira M., Inturri G., Ignaccolo M. (2021). Addressing the public transport ridership/coverage dilemma in small cities: A spatial approach, Case Studies on Transport Policy, Volume 9, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cstp.2020.06.008