There is a history of smart mobility that has the effect not only of making travel more efficient and environmentally friendly, but also of profoundly changing the scenario of an entire region and access to university education for hundreds of young people.
History is written every day by a university, Vanvitelli University, a startup, Up2Go and a scaleup, Busforfun.
Ours is a university that from a logistical point of view is particular – explains Armando Cartenì, professor and mobility manager of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli to Startupbusiness – it was born as an offshoot of Federico II, initially calling itself the Second University of Campania, and developing geographically in five municipalities of the Province of Caserta with a format that sees the different departments distributed with the concept of multi-pole but without initially having thought of a public transport system between the various poles that are located in territorial areas that are not always easily accessible: Capua, Caserta, Santa Maria Capua Vetere, Aversa, and Naples, which is the only pole that is not touched by the project we have developed with Up2Go and Busforfun”.
The locations of the Vanvitelli University
What happened was that almost all the students were forced to use private cars to reach the various locations of the university, which not only made transport inefficient from the point of view of both traffic and environmental impact, but created a non-negligible growth in the economic impact for families, so the University thought of an alternative that could be not only efficient but also within everyone’s reach, and so it isThe project was born and was called V:erysoon.
“The initial idea was to make it easier for students to access the various departments of the university, therefore the creation of a public service network in the area that would be able to integrate with various poles of the University, with the nodes of the existing railway network and also act as a connection system between the poles themselves – explains Cartenì -, We started by designing a system capable of meeting the needs of a student population of about 25,000 students, about half of whom attend every day (distributed between Capua (3 thousand), Santa Maria Capua Vetere (5 thousand five hundred), Caserta (8 thousand five hundred), Aversa (4 thousand five hundred) to which are also added those of Naples which are 6 thousand five hundred, ed.)”.
V:erysoon is a recent initiative, made possible not only by the University’s desire to respond to a need that has become almost an emergency but also by the availability of technologies that have made it possible, it should be considered that it is in the 90s that the University began to develop and then took the form it has today about ten years later and today it is finally equipped with a transport system that makes it efficient. “We conducted a survey among the students, interviewing about five thousand of them to understand the actual needs that were then materialized in the definition of the network that connects the poles with the railway stations of Caserta and Aversa and develops on the lines between Caserta, Santa Maria Capua Vetere and Capua and with the connection between Capua and Aversa, Both stop in the main locations so as to facilitate students, in addition to the carpooling platform to make the use of private cars smarter and cheaper”.
Single platform
The system is based on a single platform to which students access with their university credentials that allows them to share their car or find rides in other students’ cars and to book a seat on the shuttle: “in all, nine shuttles travel that are entirely free for students and are used every day by about 1600 students, a figure that corresponds to 11/12% of the total number of attending students, although it must be said that in these early stages of the introduction of the service we have widened the meshes on the obligation to book precisely to test the actual impact and we estimate that the students who use the service every day are many more, up to 30% of the total number of attending students, As the service evolves and is fine-tuned, booking will become essential, so we will encourage students to use it at all times.”
The shuttles are both minibuses and 54-seater coaches depending on the route, in the first case they are LPG or methane vehicles and in the second they are latest generation Euro6 vehicles and they are all equipped with GPS to allow users to know their position in real time. The application has been created by Up2Go in a logic that applies the principles of the so-called MAAS (mobility as a service) and traces a case that has no actual precedents and can therefore also become a model for other realities that have similar needs. Maria Simona Barone, general manager of Up2Go says: “we worked together with the University to create a project that was able to interconnect all the players in the system and that is why we also brought on board the skills of Busforfun, the platform therefore integrates tracking, multi-modality, reservations and we have designed it to be able to make it grow, for example in the future we will also be able to add other services such as the purchase of train tickets that lead to Caserta and Aversa but also the transport services provided by public cars such as taxis and NCC”.
“In particular,” explains Davide Buscato, co-founder and sales manager of the scaleup, “Busforfun took care of the geolocation of the vehicles and the management of ticketing functions, two features on which we have experience developed in many different contexts both in Italy and internationally.”
The V:erysoon service shuttle
“The operator that manages the vehicles is a local company that has been selected through a public tender – adds Cartenì – and their role is in addition to other services we have developed, such as the possibility of using the parking lots, which are normally paid at no cost if you reach the University by carpooling. What is important for us is that about five months after the launch, the social balance of the project is absolutely positive: we have reduced environmental impact, we have made it easier for students to participate in lessons, we have allowed families to reduce costs related to logistics. For example, the carpooling fill factor has increased by 50%, thus reducing the number of cars on the road by half, but above all we are discovering that the presence of V:erysoon positively influences the choice of students towards our university, and this is a fact that really makes a difference”.
In terms of costs, the investment is certainly important but it is absolutely efficient: “indicatively, the entire service costs about 250 thousand euros per year”, which means that with the current numbers we can talk about a cost of between 13 and 17 euros per student per month.
“It will be important to see what will happen in the coming months, when there will be new registrations, how the project will be consolidated in the area – concludes Cartenì who strongly wanted the realization of V:erysoon (a project that also won an award at the IoMobility Award) -, we also organize orientation days a couple of times a year to promote the university with all its services, including the one dedicated to mobility, which appears to be decisive for 75% of the students who responded to the last edition of the questionnaire, and V:erysoon is also starting to be popular because our buses are decorated with the name of the service and that of the university, thus becoming a decidedly recognizable presence on the roads of the province”.
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