At the roll call a few million euros are missing. Those necessary to develop local public transport and to achieve the objective of reduce private traffic by 10%. The latest estimate of the Brescia TPL, which dates back to the years of the health emergency, indicated a shortfall of 7 million. But those accounts are already outdated. For the leaders of Tpl of Brescia “We are in the perfect storm”because everything is held up on a precarious balance: on one side limited economic resourceson the other even fewer human resources.
«If we had more drivers and if we had never cut the races, today we certainly wouldn’t have the resources for the objectives set”, they say from the Agency’s headquarters in via Marconi. And as if to say that it is precisely the death of drivers that “saves” the sector, whose shortcomings have a direct impact on users. And the projections are not optimistic: the Polytechnic of Milan has confirmed a shortfall of 1.7 billion euros for all national public transport. «A dangerous financial imbalance – report Agens, Anav, Asstra, the associations representing public and private companies in the sector -, due both to the annual shortage of the National TPL financing fund (it is almost 800 million) and to the resources that they would be used to cover the future costs of renewing the collective bargaining agreement for the category, which expired in 2023, and which the trade unions have quantified at around 900 million additional euros when fully operational”.
The problem is also the same in the Brescia area, where the Most contracts are old And with low wages. Any new agreements would entail greater costs, mainly due to inflation which is eroding economic resources. Furthermore, it was already understood that the situation was delicate last year in the Brescia sector, where the Agency has agreed with the companies a travel reduction plan and despite the cuts the scenario was governed. But it’s a unstable balance. This is why the industrial system – conclude the business associations – «cannot survive without a review of the framework of functional resources. The risk is a growing reduction in supply which will discourage the demand for public mobility, thus distancing the country from the objectives of environmental sustainability and economic growth”.
Translated: a review of funding is urgently needed to avoid the semi-paralysis of national public transport and to try to encourage citizens to use the means of transport.
