The Bikeconomy in Trentino chosen as Italian testimonial of integrated mobility

Trentino is a bicycle-friendly land. One can tell by its 410 kilometers of bike trails, 500 mountain bike trails, 8 bike parks, 14 bike bar-and-grills and 12 international two-wheeled sporting events organized in 2017. There are also numerous projects to promote integrated mobility and sustainable urban transportation, through the availabilty of electric bike rentals, the increase of bike-friendly cars in regional trains and the support of innovative sector start-ups with dedicated programs. These are just some of the local good practices that Trentino Sviluppo with Trentino Marketing and Fondazione Bruno Kessler will present on Friday, November 17, to the Minister of Infrastructure Graziano Delrio at the second edition of the Bike Forum in Rome. Along with them will be three industry companies that have chosen to design and build their prototype of “bikes of the future” in Trentino. Tourism, integrated mobility and technological innovations therefore create synergy for the development of the bike economy sector that is growing strongly at the national and world level. Francesco Moser could not miss being part of the bicycle champions panel.

Making urban mobility more and more intelligent and sustainable: this is the challenge launched at the second edition of the Bike Forum, entitled “Cycling the smart cities”, to be held tomorrow, Friday, November 17, at the Maxxi Museum in Rome. The answers, presenting best practices to entrepreneurs, researchers and policy makers, including the Minister of Infrastructure Graziano Delrio, will be provided by the cities of Amsterdam and London and the “Trentino system”, with Mauro Casotto, Trentino Sviluppo Director and Annapaola Marconi, researcher with Fondazione Bruno Kessler.

Our land is in fact a large open-air velodrome with 410 kilometers of bike trails, 500 itineraries and 23 large mountain bike trails, 14 bike bar-and-grills and 8 bike parks, including the largest in Italy, extending from Val di Sole to Lake Garda, covering an area of over 80 square kilometers and 4,000 meters of elevation difference.

Only in 2017, Trentino hosted 12 international bicycle sporting events, including the Tour of the Alps, the World Cup biking finals and the Giro d’Italia. A well-established bike-friendly infrastructure that generates more than 2 million visits every year and € 400 million for allied industries. Bikeconomy is about tourism, but also about daily transportation.

Promoting the use of bicycles in the urban environment reduces Co2 emissions and traffic, thus helping make our cities more sustainable and “smarter”. To do so, however, it is necessary to increase integrated mobility, as is the case with “Bicibus Trek”, the bus which, as a “bicycle subway”, takes cyclists and their vehicles from one tourist resort to another, or “Evvai E-bike “, the provincial program for renting and recharging electric bikes. Public support for research and support of companies that develop innovative technology and sensor technology solutions is also imposrtant for the improvement ofperformance and safety of cyclists, such as SPIN Lab, the industry’s first industrial accelerator for European startups, launched last month in the Manifattura Project from the collaboration between Trentino Sviluppo, the University of Trento and the Israeli Hype Foundation, for which startuppers can apply by December 15.

Along with Casotto and Marconi, other attendees of the Rome event will be Vittorino Filippas of Fantic, a historic maker of the “Caballero” motorcycle, which is investing heavily in electric mobility, and startuppers Paolo Ferrari of Gioco Solutions and Antonio Arcadu of Supernova Vehicle. Although originally from other regions, all three have chosen or are about to choose Trentino as their base to design and develop their “bicycle of the future” prototypes. Finally, our province will be represented in the panel dedicated to the bicycle champions by Francesco Moser.