Build cities, they remain useless if a car is still needed to get from one place to another.
Each Union is equipped with its own public transport network, urban and suburban, which connects the places born in phase 2. The shape depends on the territory, and it doesn't have to be the same everywhere: light surface metro, tram, bus, electric vehicles, shuttle services. Different things work on different distances and conformations.
The plan adds a condition that is not technical: these services must be entrusted to companies that reside in the Union. A transport network is a commitment that lasts for decades, and it is the difference between an expense that leaves the territory and stable work for young people who live there.
And this phase, here nearby, has stopped being a proposal. The Unione dei Comuni Terra di Leuca (sixteen municipalities, including Patù) has activated a minibus on demand: it can be booked from the app or the call center and goes from stop to stop. In the first twenty-four hours, more than three hundred people signed up: the demand was there, the service was missing.
And it taught us something we couldn't know in 2009. We imagined lines, because public transport was like that back then; here, however, it has been seen that on-demand works better than fixed lines in small towns. An empty bus that passes six times a day costs and doesn't serve; the same vehicle that leaves when someone calls it serves and costs less. Therefore, today the Union's network is designed in two parts: a few strong lines where the numbers are, on-demand where they are not, and it's the way to not leave out the town with a thousand inhabitants, which with fixed lines always remains out.
And as we write, the same reasoning comes from another place. In Gallipoli, the SPI CGIL proposed to the Municipality free urban transport for those over 67, with an argument that's worth reading twice: it can be done by exploiting the empty seats on buses that already circulate, without additional costs for the budget. It's the reasoning of this plan applied to transport: a vehicle that leaves half empty has already paid the driver, fuel, and insurance, whoever gets on doesn't cost almost anything, and every person who gets on is a car that doesn't start.
But that proposal also says, without intending to, where the problem is that this chapter addresses: you can only make a service free if it already exists. Gallipoli has urban buses; a town with three thousand inhabitants doesn't, and for those who live there, free transport would be a discount on something that doesn't pass. That's why free transport and the network are not two separate discussions: the first fills the routes, the second makes them exist, and in the wrong order, neither works.
The emerging vision: the hub, not the vehicle
In 2009, this chapter listed means because the problem back then was that there weren't any. Today, the missing piece is not the means: it's the first and last kilometer: from home to the stop, and from the stop to where someone was going. That's where the network loses people, and that's where tools exist today that didn't in 2009.
The charging columns. In the countryside, public charging is almost non-existent, and it's the real reason why electric cars remain an urban means: not because they can't reach here, but because those without a garage with a socket can't afford it as their only car. The columns are not a service in themselves: they are part of the node, along with the stop and parking.
The car taken with the app, and the lesson from Milan. The model we're talking about has existed for over ten years in large cities, and it's precisely now regressing: in Milan, Zity closed in December 2025, and since January 2026, Enjoy has abandoned the "pick up and drop off wherever you want", switching to fixed stations at service stations, airports, and train stations. If that model doesn't work where density is highest, it's not proposed as is to a town of three thousand inhabitants. But the direction they've moved in is exactly ours: cars stopped at a point, tied to transport nodes. Here, the sensible form is public: two or three Union cars at the node, bookable from the app, serving social services by day and citizens by night. A means that stands still for twenty hours a day is a means paid three times.
The pedal-assisted bicycles. The numbers change more than it seems: the seven kilometers between two towns, with a normal bike, are a sports choice made by few; with the assisted bike, they're twenty minutes within anyone's reach, including those who are sixty and those who arrive at work without needing to change. Here, there are no climbs: the assisted bike removes the last two excuses, distance and wind.
Scooters, to be honest, are a different story: they don't make sense on provincial roads and would be hazardous. Their place is inside phase 2 city centers, for short trips, not between towns.
And it's not a prediction: it's already a service somewhere. The case that resembles us the most is not American, it's German: in Hesse, in the Offenbach district, driverless shuttles that can be booked on demand are in circulation, created specifically for areas where the bus passes only a few times a day, with the declared goal of integrating them with on-demand transportation by 2030 in rural areas. It's like the Terra di Leuca minibus, but ten years ahead. In Italy, the first public vehicle that can be boarded without a driver is in Turin, and in June of this year, eighteen European countries signed a commitment to open experimental areas, putting public transportation at the center.
Meanwhile, others are setting the pace. In the United States, they're traveling on the order of half a million paid trips per week in about ten cities, with the goal of doubling by the end of the year and reaching over twenty cities. In China, the service is active in about twenty cities and has exceeded one hundred million trips; but the data that matters to us is another: in Wuhan, the math works out per vehicle. In other words, it's no longer a demonstration paid for by investors, it's a self-sustaining service.
Honestly: those are metropolises, and we don't have their density. Copying them would be the same mistake as car sharing. But it's from them that the price of every component comes down: sensors, software, vehicles. And that's why the right question to ask today is not «when will it arrive here», but «what should we have already done when it arrives». The answer is in the paragraph above: the hub, the stop, the habit of booking a vehicle from your phone. None of those three things need autonomous driving to exist now, and without those three things, autonomous driving won't have anything to latch onto here.
And this is the point that brings everything together. None of these things work alone, scattered: five services with five different apps are five gadgets. They work if they converge in a hub for every phase 2 center: where minibuses stop, where bikes and shared cars are, where you recharge, and where a single booking brings the entire trip together. The difference between a network and a collection of vehicles is all there.
Original text from 2009, revised and expanded in August 2026.
How we wrote it before
This chapter has been rewritten. The earlier text is kept below: reading it shows how the idea changed, and when.
2009 The 2009 text
Testo originale del piano, scritto nel 2009. La stesura del 2026 ne conserva tutti i concetti e ne rivede la forma.
A questo punto, una volta realizzate le precedenti fasi, si rende necessario il collegamento interno tra i vari territori, quindi ogni unione dovrà dotarsi di un sistema di trasporto adeguato al territorio urbano ed extraurbano, per favorire la fruibilità delle aree descritte nella Fase 2.
I servizi di trasporto che potranno essere utilizzati sono: monorotaia di superficie, tram, bus, mezzi elettrici, servizi navetta, ecc.
Questi servizi devono essere affidati ad aziende residenti in ogni singola unione, per favorire l’imprenditoria giovanile.
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