Skip to main content

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

  • Uber may never be profitable … admits Uber
    April 12, 2019
    Private ride-hailing giant Uber, which is aiming to follow rival Lyft in becoming a public company this year, has warned that it may never be profitable. The candid admission comes in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as Uber prepares for an initial public offering (IPO) which it reportedly hopes will value the company at $100 billion. This potential IPO figure is some way below the $120bn predicted by analysts just last year. And Uber warns: “We have incurred significant loss
  • Implementing innovative and green urban transport solutions
    August 5, 2013
    The European Solutions project on innovative and green urban transport solutions is calling for cities from Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Mediterranean to become involved in the project's innovation activities as leading, take-up or training city. The main focus of the Solutions project will be on the exchange between cities from Europe, Latin America and the Mediterranean. Solutions brings together some of the leading experts and city networks from these regions, aiming to foster knowledge exchange a
  • Intertraffic Amsterdam 2016 Innovation Awards finalists
    February 1, 2016
    Smart and innovative thinking will again be awarded at the world’s largest, and best attended, trade fair for the infrastructure, traffic management, safety, parking, and smart mobility sectors, when the winners of the 2016 Intertraffic Innovation Awards are announced on 5 April during the opening ceremony.
  • Miovision partners with CT Group to distribute traffic signal platform across US
    February 8, 2019
    Traffic signal control specialist CT Group is to distribute Miovision’s TrafficLink ITS platformacross the US in a new partnership between the two companies. The exclusive deal will see CT selling the product in 31 states from Alaska to Wyoming. TrafficLink is a turnkey solution for remote traffic signal management, with managed cellular connection and tools for signal monitoring, video streaming, maintenance alerts and traffic data insights. “As more cities aim to become data-driven smart cities,