Venice - ITALY

Facts and figures about Venice
The City of Venice is the capital of the Veneto region, located in north-east Italy. The structure of the City is quite particular, as it is actually made up of two parts, mainland Venice (Mestre) and Island Venice, each of them very well defined. The connection between the two parts of the city is provided by a bridge used by trains, buses and cars (cycling is strictlly forbidden on Island Venice and along the bridge).

The local actions within PRESTO will take place in Mestre. The municipality of Mestre has approx. 176.000 inhabitants. Its cycling network has a total lenght of 450 km of bike lanes and bike tracks connecting the surrounding areas to the city centre.

The cycling modal share in Mestre is considerably high, around 18% of all trips are made daily by bike. Mestre is a "CLIMBER" city for its level of cycling but it's on the right path to become a champion city soon.

Local activities in Venice
The city of Venice's motto within PRESTO is “Connecting Everybody to the Bicycle”. The local activities planned during the project lifetime include following five actions:

1. Developing bicycle paths connecting to neighbouring towns and leisure itinerates. PRESTO gives the city the opportunity to develop much needed plans for bicycle paths connecting mainland Venice to neighbouring towns (including island Venice) and to develop bicycle plans for leisure.

2. Preliminary project solutions for Black spots. This measure is about making detailed black spot project fiches for circa 60 black spots in mainland Venice with the aim of bringing about significant reductions in accidents through the stu dy and development of potential solutions for locations and sections of road that have an unsatisfactory casualty accident record or that have a significant accident potential.

3. The Green Mile. The Green Mile project is a sustainable mobility education project with primary schools which places emphasis on the bicycle through a competition. This measure focuses on the identification of home school routes which are alternative to that of the private car in order to encourage parents and children to use these options more regularly, after the end of the project. Given their experience, the City of Venice would like FIAB (the Italiaa cycling federation) to plan and manage the Green Mile project.

4. "No Bici, No Party". The “No bici, No Party” campaign is all about bringing city decision makers and local cyclists closer together for three reasons . To reward and encourage current cyclists, collect information from cyclists useful to bicycle plan information and management of the bicycle office and to inform cyclists on facilities available.

5. Demonstration of electric bicycles during a City of Venice bicycle event. The measure consists of a test-track where people can actually ride the electric bikes (and other bikes) to be held during another event, which could possibly be an “In the city without my car” initiative. It has been seen in Venice that electric bikes users are mainly older people. For this reason, the City will send information and invitations to the demonstration to local older people’s associations. However, the event is not exclusively for older people and will also seek to attract other potential user groups (young women, shoppers, etc.).