Dr. Maria Chiara Leva:

We should never forget to go back to basics. There is a problem with connectivity to destinations. The country has a two-speed reality. One is in availability. The connectivity in urban counties is not available in rural and suburban counties. Even within urban counties, we have had more than one interview where we heard that the problem with public transport was one of connectivity. Our connectivity is designed to lead us to the city centre and then from there to another point of interest. Mobility around the local area is not so good. We also studied sustainable modes of transport in rural areas.

We have examples from the European research in and around Barcelona in the suburbs and not the city centre. In the suburban areas, it is becoming more and popular for families to have adopted, or to be considering adopting, carpooling with a little van. You do not need a bus because the demand is much lower. Little vans can be shared by different people, some of whom are elderly and some of whom are not necessarily able to use a car. These are solutions we should look into because our service provision in rural and suburban areas is not up to par yet and we should take that into account. We need to go back to basics.

Going back to the security problem, what I showed as an example from the Italian police is also true in other countries. For instance, myself and Dr. Rock were discussing how there are night coaches in Australia, so there is at least part of the train where this is realised. I must comment on how well the Luas is doing. I feel safe on the Luas thanks to the security that is deployed. It is heavily deployed for the purpose of ensuring everyone pays their fare and there are no disruptive passengers or-----