Italy's Sustainable Mobility Revolution: Why Data Is the Missing Piece

Italy is in the middle of a sustainable mobility revolution. Between the PNRR (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza), national cycling plans, and municipal investments, over EUR 1.2 billion has been committed to cycling infrastructure between 2018 and 2026.

The ambition is real. Milan is building a 750 km metropolitan cycle network. Bologna has become Europe’s largest 30 km/h city. Rome is planning a 50 km circular cycling route connecting its greatest landmarks.

But there’s a problem. As of the latest reporting, only 11.5% of PNRR cycling funds had actually been spent. For tourist cycle paths specifically, the figure was just 4.5%. Italian cities have the funding — what many of them lack is the data to spend it effectively.

The Investment Landscape

PNRR: EUR 600 Million for Cycling

Italy’s Recovery and Resilience Plan allocates EUR 600 million specifically for cycling infrastructure:

• EUR 400 million for tourist cycle routes (targeting 1,235 km of new paths)
• EUR 200 million for urban cycle paths

Combined with the General Plan of Cycling Mobility 2022-2024 (EUR 943 million in loans), total cycling investment reaches EUR 1.2 billion — an unprecedented commitment for a country where cycling infrastructure has historically been an afterthought outside a handful of northern cities.

The Spending Problem

The money is there. The spending is not. Bureaucratic delays, planning capacity constraints, and a lack of data-driven project prioritisation have left billions on the table. Cities struggle to move from strategy documents to shovel-ready projects because they don’t have the evidence base to identify where investment will have the greatest impact.

This isn’t just an Italian problem — it’s a universal challenge in active transport planning. But in Italy, where the funding window is time-limited and politically contingent, the stakes are particularly high.

Three Cities, Three Approaches

Milan: Strade Aperte

Milan’s “Strade Aperte” (Open Roads) plan, launched in April 2020, was one of Europe’s most ambitious post-COVID cycling responses. The city converted 35 km of roads into bike paths and pedestrian areas — built rapidly using tactical urbanism approaches.

The results were striking. Corso Buenos Aires, Milan’s busiest shopping street, recorded up to 10,000 cyclists per day — a 122% increase compared to the previous year. The success led to the Cambio Biciplan, an even more ambitious metropolitan plan to build 750 km of segregated cycle highways across greater Milan by 2035.

What made Milan’s approach work was speed and political commitment. What it still lacks is comprehensive network-wide data — the kind that shows not just how many people ride on the new infrastructure, but where demand exists on streets that haven’t been transformed yet.

Bologna: Città 30

On January 16, 2024, Bologna became the first major Italian city to implement a city-wide 30 km/h speed limit. After one year, the results were remarkable:

• 371 fewer accidents compared to the 2022-2023 average
• Zero pedestrian deaths — for the first time in at least 33 years
• 10% increase in bicycle traffic
• 69% surge in bike-sharing usage
• NO2 pollution dropped 29.3% — the lowest level in a decade

The average delay per motorist? 12 seconds per trip.

Bologna’s success demonstrates that traffic calming and cycling growth are deeply connected. But it also raises the next question: now that more people are cycling, where should the city invest in dedicated cycling infrastructure to serve this growing demand? That answer requires data.

Rome: The GRAB

Rome’s GRAB (Grande Raccordo Anulare delle Bici) is a planned 50 km circular cycle path connecting the Colosseum, the Appian Way, Villa Borghese, and other landmarks — integrating with metro, tram, and train lines. The definitive design was approved in December 2023, with links to the 2025 Jubilee preparations.

The GRAB is ambitious and potentially transformative for a city where cycling has long been considered impossible. But Rome faces the same challenge as every city attempting to build cycling infrastructure in a car-dominated environment: how do you prove demand exists before the infrastructure is built?

Crowdsourced cycling data can answer that question by capturing the rides that are already happening — on busy roads, through dangerous intersections, along desire lines that formal planning processes haven’t identified.

The Data Gap

Italian cities share a common challenge: they have strategy documents and funding, but lack the granular, real-time data needed to translate plans into effective infrastructure.

What’s Missing

• Route data: Where are people actually riding? Not just at counter locations, but across the entire network. Which streets have latent cycling demand that isn’t visible because the conditions are too dangerous?
• Demographic data: Who is riding? Are new infrastructure investments attracting families, women, and older riders — or only serving existing enthusiasts?
• Before/after measurement: When a new cycle path opens, how does ridership change? Not just on the new path, but on parallel routes and the surrounding network?
• Safety feedback: Where are the dangerous intersections, surface defects, and conflict points that riders experience daily but that don’t appear in formal safety audits?

Why It Matters Now

The PNRR funding has deadlines. The political will behind cycling investment — while stronger than ever — is not guaranteed to last. Cities that can demonstrate measurable outcomes from their investments will be in a far stronger position to secure continued funding than those relying on strategy documents and assumptions.

Bologna’s Città 30 experience illustrates the point perfectly. Despite achieving zero pedestrian deaths and measurable improvements across every metric, the policy faced fierce opposition from Italy’s national government and segments of the media. Without comprehensive data to demonstrate outcomes, even successful policies are vulnerable to political attack.

What Data-Driven Planning Looks Like

The cities that will get the most value from Italy’s cycling investment boom are those that build data collection into their infrastructure strategy from the start.

This means:

• Mapping existing cycling demand before deciding where to build — using crowdsourced route data from riders’ own devices
• Tracking demographic shifts as new infrastructure opens — measuring whether investments are attracting diverse riders or only serving existing users
• Establishing baseline measurements for every project — so before/after comparisons are possible from day one
• Creating real-time feedback loops — where rider-reported infrastructure issues inform maintenance priorities and design improvements
• Building evidence-based business cases that survive political scrutiny — because the data speaks for itself

Party Onbici was endorsed by Transport for NSW as a graduate of their Active Transport Innovation Challenge and selected as a semi-finalist in the Toyota Mobility Foundation’s $3 million Venice Sustainable Cities Challenge — demonstrating that this approach works in practice, not just in theory.

Sources:

• 600 million euros for cycle paths in the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan — SmartGreen Post
• Cycle paths, Italy is behind: spending of PNRR funds remains low — FIRSTonline
• The importance of National Cycling Strategies: Italy implements new General Plan of Cycling Mobility — European Cyclists’ Federation
• Strade Aperte: how Milan plans to reduce cars — LifeGate
• One year at 30 km/h: Bologna changes pace and wins — FIT Consulting
• Bologna’s 30km/h speed limit sparks protests — Euronews
• GRAB — European Commission project page
• Venice Sustainable Cities Challenge Semi-Finalists — Toyota Mobility Foundation
• Party Onbici: Cycling Social, Safer, Smarter — Smart Cities Council