Autolinee Toscane’s objective of renewing at least half of the inherited fleet of vehicles in Tuscany by the end of 2025 is rapidly approaching, an objective which obviously also concerns the Lucca area. In fact, since yesterday 4 new 9-metre blue buses have been in service on the streets of the province of Lucca for the extra-urban service. They are equipped with Euro 6 Step E diesel engines and are produced by the Otokar company. At the moment, they are destined for Garfagnana and Mediavalle, but then obviously they will be used to replace the older vehicles to be retired. They are small buses, therefore suitable for extra-urban routes where the roads are narrower, with the blue livery indicating the extra-urban service and can transport up to 51 people with 38 seats, but given that they also have provision for people on mobility reduced (both the platform for getting on and off and the protected area on board), in the case of a person with a wheelchair the total seats on board are reduced to 43 with 35 seats.
In Lucca, 27 new buses arrived in Lucca in the first two years of AT’s management of the TPL service. And if we examine the last 7 months, from December 2023 to mid-June 2024, 16 have arrived: in practice the LPT service in the Lucca area in recent months has seen a new vehicle every 13 days (including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays) .
In total, by the end of this year AT expects to reach 58 new vehicles entered in the province of Lucca in the last 12 months alone. The plan to renew the Autolinee Toscane vehicle fleet also envisages introducing approximately another 800 new buses into the Tuscan LPT by the end of 2025, the geographical distribution of which province by province will be decided based on the needs of the individual territories.
“The process of building a large Tuscan local road transport company, started in November 2021, is progressing with substantial investments in vehicles, people and technologies, despite the difficulties due to the user crisis caused by the Covid pandemic and the increase in energy and raw material costs. – explains the CEO of Autolinee Toscane Jean-Luc Laugaa -. And these new buses are proof of this, as are the resources injected for example to equip each of our buses with a contactless on-board payment system, we are the first and so far only region in Italy to have it, or the hiring of over a thousand people in 24 months. What is needed now is for everyone to be aware of how crucial it is now not to interrupt this virtuous path, but if anything to support it adequately”
