Thanks to additional funding from the Interreg Italy-Switzerland Co-operation Programme, the MOBSTER project enters a new phase, which will integrate and consolidate the results achieved in the first 3 ½ years of the project.
This new period, which is expected to last 9 months, will allow to integrate and complete the original project. The aim is to analyse the feasibility of decarbonising public transport in the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and South Tyrol, in order to reduce the environmental impact but also as a means of counteracting the increase in transport fuel prices. The feasibility study of the switch to electric and hydrogen will cover public transport both by road (bus lines) and by lake (ferries and boats), to try to understand which of the current lines operating in Alto Adige and VCO could be effectively replaced with zero-emission vehicles.
In parallel, the project team will work on the infrastructural part, trying to identify the locations and type of recharging stations that it would be desirable to install in order to ensure the effective use of electric and hydrogen vehicles, thus achieving 100% decarbonisation without bringing about any changes to the travel times and routes currently offered. The Atlas already available online will then be updated to indicate the most suitable sites for the installation of charging and refuelling infrastructure.
The official kick-off meeting took place on Friday, 2 December 2022. In the meantime, the project partners, with Eurac Research and VCO Trasporti in the forefront, have already started the data collection activities preparatory to the realisation of the feasibility studies, and in the coming months the first results will be published. A series of documents and information materials produced during the first phase of the project remain available online (and can be downloaded free of charge), including the Inventory of Best Practices by Region (edited by Protoscar, it lists examples of virtuous realities and analyses the best tourist itineraries for owners of electric vehicles, offers dedicated to tourists and policies in support of electric mobility), the Report of electric mobility patterns and the Atlas infrastructure needs for electric mobility.