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In recent weeks, more and more experts and observers view with concern the situation of public transport in the main Italian cities, which have become quite crowded after the start of schools and the resumption of activities in cities, and therefore potential environments for the spread of the coronavirus.
«Spending twenty minutes in a hundred people in a subway car multiplies the probability of contagion. You can also have the surgical mask, but if there is one super spreader in the wagon that maybe the mask does not use it or wears it badly, the epidemic is going to homes and schools “, he explained yesterday in Republic biologist Enrico Bucci, explaining more veiled comments expressed over the days by various other experts, probably triggered by the many photos recently circulated on social media showing crowded subway and train platforms, very narrow spaces on buses and a sensation widespread agglomeration in large quantities. cities during peak hours.
Even those responsible for transport in the regions and municipalities have been saying for days that the problem exists, and that it is not negligible either: for Stefano Bonaccini, president of Emilia-Romagna, the flow during peak hours “is difficult to manage and control”, while For the mayor of Bari and president of ANCI, Antonio De Caro, at the moment “transport companies cannot do it” to manage the problem alone. Even the technical-scientific Committee of Civil Protection (CTS) recently found that public transport local represents “an important criticality”, which “does not seem to have adapted to the renewed needs” imposed by the pandemic.
The risk of becoming infected in public transport has not yet been fully studied, but early research seems to suggest that much depends on the distance maintained by the passenger or passengers who are contagious at the time, and the time they spend in the means of transport. transport (Studies of resistance to coronavirus on surfaces are not yet clear enough to draw conclusions). A study by the University of Southampton carried out in collaboration with some Chinese institutes on Chinese high-speed train passengers estimated that, in the presence of a positive person on board without a mask, passengers seated in the three rows and five blocks in front and behind they have up to a 10 percent chance of becoming infected, even at a safe distance.
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The distances on buses and the subway in large cities are much shorter than those of high-speed trains. And if the time spent on board is much shorter, controls on compliance with distances and precautions by passengers are also more rare. In recent months, those who live in a big city will have often boarded a mode of transport in which only part of the passengers wore a mask; which is the only common protective device that can limit contagion in confined environments such as subway cars, as recent research from the New York Times.
In the months of the first peak of the pandemic, at least in Italy, public transport was practically deserted, thanks to almost total restrictions on travel and the closure of schools. With the return of the holidays and the gradual reopening of schools and offices, and thanks to the positive data on the pandemic in Italy, at least until the beginning of October, buses and the metro are filling up again: especially with students and people who simply they can not. afford to travel by car due to the cost of vehicle maintenance, fuel, and parking and entry limitations in city centers.
In early September the government, after a confrontation with the regions, had established that each vehicle had to travel at a maximum of 80 percent of capacity. The measure was also confirmed in the last meeting between the Ministry of Transport and local authorities, and vigorously defended by Minister Paola De Micheli. From ASSTRA, the trade association representing 144 local public transport companies, they announced that companies throughout Italy immediately mobilized to enforce the new measure, and the data seems to confirm this.
ATAC, the company that manages public transport in Rome, let the HuffPost According to its internal data, the capacity has always been respected up to 80 percent. Even ATM, its Milanese counterpart, assures that at the moment vehicles travel with an average capacity 50-55 percent lower than last year, and already in May it had introduced a system to block the turnstiles of the subways in case they were present. . more than 60 people on the dock.
The problem is that limiting capacity to 20 percent does not prevent passengers from being less than a meter apart at the busiest times, that is, the minimum measure to apply physical spacing and keep a safe distance from a person. infected. “When at the government level it was decided to fill the media up to 80 percent, it means that there has been an exception to the principle of distancing,” he said very explicitly to theAdnkronos Umberto De Gregorio, president of Eav, the regional company in Campania that deals with transport.
For the CTS, capacity had to be reduced – it seems that the hypothesis of keeping it at 50 percent has circulated – but even this hypothesis would not guarantee compliance with the rules that apply elsewhere. “To have a space of one meter, it would probably have to go down to 25 percent” of capacity, he explained to Daily occurrence Luca Tosi, director of the local public transport agency of Milan, Monza and Brianza, Lodi and Pavia.
And yet, with such a reduced capacity, at 25 or 50 percent, it would be practically impossible to guarantee the influx of travelers who have to go to their workplaces every morning and especially the influx of students to schools, which said the government. repeatedly to consider it a priority. Even today, the most critical time for all local public transport companies is between 7.30 am and 9.30 am, which corresponds to the entrance to schools and offices.
In the ideal world, the government would allocate multi-million dollar funds to boost careers and provide the opportunity to hire the necessary personnel to deal with the emergency. But near-linear cuts have been concentrated in the local transport sector for years: in the last ten years alone, 10 billion euros of funding has been cut in Italy, he said. tomorrow transport planning expert Ennio Cascetta – and conflicts of jurisdiction between the various local authorities, with the result that perhaps not even a single assignment only one it might be enough to resolve the situation.
So there is a timing problem. “Local public transport is not a very flexible system”, explains Andrea Corsini, Councilor for Mobility of Emilia-Romagna: “you have to find buses, if you don’t have to build and buy them, and we are talking about things that you cannot get short term”. in the medium term. And also, where do you find the drivers? ».
Excluding the broader solutions, for cost and time reasons, the government is focusing on patches. Between the relaunch decree and the August decree, it allocated 900 million euros to strengthen local public transport, and at the beginning of September it announced another 300 million for the regions and 150 million for the municipalities.
– read also: The August decree, explained
However, companies used much of that money to cover budget gaps caused by the very low number of passengers and, therefore, revenue from tickets and passes. Therefore, the government has valued that at this time the best way to tackle the problem is to intervene in the influx of schools, and thus avoid crowds even at peak times.
The first solution in which the regions are working is to rent private buses -those in the so-called NCC sector, Noleggio Con Conducente, in very serious difficulty for months due to the rarefaction of internal movements- and thus increase trips at peak times, especially for the morning. According to a 2018 survey by the Isfort institute, some 6,000 companies work in the NACC sector in Italy, 69 percent of which in the Center-South and on the Islands.
Using them to improve public service would have the double benefit of increasing short-duration trips and saving hundreds of businesses that are at risk of closing due to the effects of the pandemic on tourism and domestic travel. ASSTRA, among other things, has asked the government to allocate another 500 million euros for this purpose and to simplify the rules that allow local authorities to enter into contracts with NCC companies.
However, even this solution is not immediate. It is necessary to determine who should take charge of it – generally local public transport is a regional responsibility, but school transport is the responsibility of the municipalities, and even the provinces retain some powers – negotiate the price with the companies, verify that all means comply with regulations to be able to operate in public service, adjust changes between public needs and driver contracts, and many other aspects. In addition, private buses cannot run on all routes, since their size does not allow you to move around the historic centers.
Leaving the management of the file to the local authorities, as it usually happens, has two parallel effects: on the one hand, it gives free rein to the most entrepreneurial regions; on the other hand, it effectively allows some regions to take no action. To date in Italy there are regions such as Emilia-Romagna, where currently about 300 private buses circulate on extra-urban routes, Puglia, where the hypothesis is discussed for more than a month without any concrete consequence, and Lombardy, where nothing seems to move and the region in late summer confirmed the absence of limits on seating capacity on regional trains.
But the issue is so complicated that the government is criticized even when it makes clearer and more focused decisions. In the latest decree of the Prime Minister’s Office, for example, the government imposed that secondary schools do not open before 9 in the morning: according to Corsini, the measure was designed above all for large cities, “where there is metro” . In small towns, on the other hand, the entire local public transportation system is designed to get people to big cities at 8 a.m., when schools and most offices open, and it’s difficult to switch on the fly. (especially the regional train timetables, linked to the needs of the national network).
The risk, in short, is that children continue taking the trains and buses that take them to the city at 8 am, because the following are much rarer; or that they move en masse in the new careers planned for those who enter school at 9 or 10, with the usual risk of crowding. “In my opinion it is not clear what local public transport means in these contexts and in these territorial spaces: otherwise they would not have decided to enter after 9 o’clock,” Corsini comments with some bitterness.
The most realistic solution is for regions, provinces and municipalities to try to meet with schools, and vice versa, waiting to understand how the spread of the infection will develop at the national level and if more restrictions will be necessary that for example could reduce the number of commuters who still take the train, bus or subway to work today.
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