In Italy, over 7 million people live in conditions of "transport poverty," a still little-known form of social vulnerability characterized by the inability to afford the costs of public or private transportation and the lack or limited access to the transportation needed to access essential services, employment, and economic and social opportunities. This situation, at regional level, is particularly pronounced in certain areas of Sardinia and Sicily.

This data emerges from a study on transport poverty in Italy, presented today by the Transport Poverty Lab , promoted by the Foundation for Sustainable Development, with the support of Tper and Nordcom, the patronage of the European Commission, the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, and the technical collaboration of the Sharing Mobility Observatory and the Transform Transport ETS Foundation.

According to the report, approximately 1.2 million families in our country are simultaneously at risk of poverty and face particularly high mobility costs.

At the same time, 7.3 million citizens live in areas with insufficient public transportation. The geographical disparity is marked, with southern regions experiencing the most severe difficulties. As mentioned, for Sardinia, as for Sicily, the data are revealing, but negative. In fact, on the island, the availability of local public transportation in some areas drops below 200 seat-km per inhabitant, compared to a national average of 4,623 and over 16,000 seat-km recorded in Milan (seat-km is the unit of measurement of public transportation availability, defined as the movement of one available seat (seated or standing) in a vehicle over a distance of 1 km).

(Unioneonline/lf)

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