Demand Aligned Transportation System (TAD) of the South Salento Inland Area

Designing Demand Aligned Transportation System (TAD) of the South Salento Inland Area

South Salento – Capo di Leuca is an association of 16 municipalities in Puglia located in the extreme southern tip of the province of Lecce. A territory among those selected by the National Strategy of Inner Areas (SNAI) in which about 125,000 people reside, characterized by phenomena of demographic decline and marginalization.

One of the pivotal projects of the territorial cohesion and development strategy, financed through the SNAI with 3.5M€, involves the implementation of a “demand-aligned transport system (TAD)” based on three macro actions:

• the optimization of existing local public transport services to and from the inland area from the capital and other main service centers (suburban bus and rail service)
• the reorganization and enhancement of bus lines for connections between the municipalities in the area and between the hinterland and the coast
• the activation of an additional flexible collective transport service with minibuses (on demand or on call)

TRT worked on the study to assess the mobility demand expressed by the area’s population and on the detailed design of the TAD system, including the definition of the operating and governance model and the features and functionality of the IT reservation platform.

TAD study and project were based on the results of the European project HiReach, which investigated the issues of inclusive mobility and “mobility poverty” just in South Salento by also testing the first flexible transportation service in summer 2020 in collaboration with Ferrovie del Sud Est (Italian FS Group).