A Student's CIVITAS Day

CIVITAS Initiative

In an activity to encourage students and their families to use public transport for their home to school trips, CIVITAS SMILE were successful in encouraging around one hundred students to travel across town using the public transport system: the new metro line, elevators, escalators and buses.

Over the past few years, Potenza has undertaken a transformation of their public transport system: new services, improvements to the existing system and the road network. All the efforts are directed to encourage citizens to travel using public transport and to reverse the trend of people travelling by private car .Families taking children to school by private car represent a huge part of traffic within the town and the number of students travelling by school bus or on foot is quite small. Therefore, a proportion of SMILE activities in Potenza have focused on working with students on their travelling habits. Around one hundred students have been introduced at school to the SMILE project to learn about its objectives and activities in Potenza. They have been invited to think about their travel habits and the impact this has on the environment and city congestion. The results of this initial survey revealed that very few students travelled by public transport and that they rarely walked to school. The children were invited to write some “filastrade” (rhymes of the road) and the most beautiful have been published on the school website http://www.potenzaterzo.it/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1880. To show that the city offers alternative options to the private car, around one hundred students crossed the town using the different means of public transport: the new metro line, elevators, escalators and buses. In many cases, it was the first time that children had used the metro and buses. At the end of the trip, students received a CIVITAS Paper to report their impressions of the public system, comments and suggestions, promises to change habits. The papers will be given to the Mayor and to the Transport Town Councillor: the new mobility system will take into account not only technicians’ and politicians’ voices, but also the opinion of children and students.

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