Bologna rewards ‘green’ travel with free beer

Travellers in the Italian city of Bologna are being incentivised to give up their cars with the offer of beer, ice cream or cinema tickets. An anti-pollution initiative rewards people who cycle, walk or take public transport. A hundred local businesses have signed up to the programme – called Bella Mossa (or ‘Good Job’) - to give away discount vouchers, the BBC reports. Funded by the European Union and Bologna’s local government, Bella Mossa runs for six months of the year. Users download an app, log thei
November 1, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
Travellers in the Italian city of Bologna are being incentivised to give up their cars with the offer of beer, ice cream or cinema tickets.


An anti-pollution initiative rewards people who cycle, walk or take public transport. A hundred local businesses have signed up to the programme – called Bella Mossa (or ‘Good Job’) - to give away discount vouchers, the %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external BBC reports false https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06pjwck false false%>.

Funded by the European Union and Bologna’s local government, Bella Mossa runs for six months of the year. Users download an app, log their sustainable journeys and exchange the points they receive for goods.

Points are based on distance travelled, with a GPS tracker ensuring people are using the mode of transport which they say they are. You can only log four ‘green’ journeys per day – which means you have to keep using the app over time to build up points.

Urban planner Marco Amadori set up Bella Mossa in 2017 to make sustainable transport attractive: “For the first time we have been able to involve all people,” he said. “Everybody will have the possibility to change a car trip into a bike trip or into a bus trip and be able to get some discount for his good behaviour.”

Last year the app recorded 3.7 million sustainable journeys in Bologna, with 16,000 reward vouchers claimed, says the BBC’s Amelia Hemphill.

Related Content

  • MaaS Market London: year one update from Whim West Midlands
    February 20, 2019
    Almost a year after it came into operation, Transport for West Midlands’ head of smart travel, Chris Lane, will update delegates at the MaaS Market Conference (London 20 and 21 March) on how the Whim West Midlands pilot scheme is working in practice. Introduced in conjunction with MaaS Global, Whim West Midlands is the UK’s first Mobility as a Service platform to go live to the general public and combines public transport (bus and tram) with on-demand taxis and bike sharing. The initial Pay-As-You-Go se
    Read More
  • Populus and Lime enter vehicle data partnership in Seattle
    December 11, 2018
    A partnership between data and car-share providers has been formed in the US city of Seattle to help improve parking utilisation. Data solutions company Populus will receive real-time GPS data from Lime’s free-floating car-share fleet, LimePod, which launched last month in the city. The Populus platform will then deliver reports to the Seattle Department of Transportation in a bid to evaluate the use of curb space and develop parking strategies that will help reduce vehicle ownership. Populus says its
    Read More
  • Redflex ‘does not expect further action’ from US Department of Justice
    January 18, 2019
    Traffic enforcement specialist Redflex Holdings says it expects no further legal action or new financial liabilities arising from investigations by the US Department of Justice (DoJ). The action, which has rumbled on for several years, related to misconduct by former employees of US subsidiary Redflex Traffic Systems. The company signed a two-year non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with the DoJ, which has now ended. Under the expired deal, the DoJ agreed not to charge the firm with any offence provided t
    Read More
  • Lyft, Uber have mixed impact on San Fran mobility
    May 14, 2018
    The extent to which ride-hailing has become a real force in the mobility landscape of San Francisco is great for consumers – but there are downsides, a report finds. Andrew Stone takes a look. Uber and Lyft, the two major ride-hailing platforms in San Francisco, are out-competing local cab firms in many ways - and are firmly established as a significant part of the daily mobility mix there, a recent study reveals. Researchers mined publicly-available data derived from the application programming interface
    Read More

Highlighted Content