Executive Summary

The transportation and parking systems in the historic city of Venice have gone through many changes. From the railway bridge in 1846 to the Piazzale Roma car garage in 1934, little has changed since these earlier innovations. The historic city’s only modes of transportation are still walking or by boat, and temporary boat parking is extremely limited. Combined with the ever-increasing tourist population, travel through the historic city has become increasingly difficult for business visitors and even for the residents of Venice .

This project’s mission was to investigate current transportation and parking systems in Venice and explore potential improvements. Our objectives were to:

1. Assess current transportation and parking systems within Venice.

2. Explore improvements to the current water bus and boat parking systems.

3. Research innovative transportation and parking options as well as their impacts.

We explored several topics including car parking, boat parking, express boat lines, and a potential subway system. We formed separate methodology for examining each topic and have arrived at several results and recommendations.

Boat Parking

We analyzed the locations of over 1,600 rive, places along canals where boats can park, which are located throughout the historic city. Almost all of these are limited to 15 minutes of usage. Among these 1,600 spots, 91 allow for one-hour parking, and only 59 of the one-hour spots allow parking during daytime hours.

Using data previously collected by the Venice Project Center recording the location of every store in the historic city, we created a heat-map of stores to identify the optimal locations for boat parking spots. We excluded stores primarily targeted to tourists such as souvenir shops, and plotted the current one-hour parking spots on the same map. We determined that the current one-hour spots are not in ideal locations. This can be seen in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Map of one-hour daytime spots superimposed on a heat map of non-tourist stores.

Based on this analysis, we recommend that the number of temporary boat parking spots be increased. To identify the locations of new parking spots, we applied the following criteria: the spot must have a minimum number of stores nearby and more spots should be located near areas of greater store density. Spots also had to be located in canals with a minimum width of 5 meters to allow parking on both sides of the canal and continued mobility through it. Finally, we implemented a minimum distance between any two spots. We used QGIS to visualize the 31 docks that Vento di Venezia has proposed around Venice, and removed potential parking spots in proximity to these docks. Figure 2 shows the 221 spots that we suggest as ideal for temporary boat parking. The tool we created can be customized to modify the criteria and analyze changes.

Figure 2. Map of our proposed temporary boat parking spots

We examined the current system for regulating boat parking in the current temporary parking spots. We found that boat owners are exceeding the one-hour maximum time limit at the spots, certain spots are missing signs, and no observed boats displayed the required disco orario (a self time-meter).

We proposed a new online tool for reserving and regulating boat parking. This system could be a web-based application suitable for smartphones or other browsers to allow boat owners to register their boats and to reserve and pay for a boat parking spot in advance. Authorities could use the same application with a separate interface to permit them to view reservations, payments and compliance, including issuing fines. A concept for the view of the application for users or for system administrators can be seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Design for a boat parking app, showing the user view (above left) and the enforcement view (above right)

Car Parking

Next, we examined car parking by gathering data on the number of available parking spots from several online resources and from Google satellite views. We understood the need for car parking based on the number of people entering the historic city via the Ponte della Libertá. We found that there are a total of 5,633 parking spots in Venice, with an additional 1,790 spots immediately across the Ponte della Libertá in Mestre. One possible location for additional parking is converting an existing surface lot on Tronchetto into a five-tier lot. We also performed a cost benefit analysis on this proposed lot and found that this lot would cost €21.99 million to construct and result in 1,207 additional parking spaces. Because creating additional parking in Venice could increase traffic on the Ponte della Libertá, we do not recommend such investments in additional car parking in the historic city.

Current Transportation Systems: Water Bus Lines

Congested water bus lines with frequent stops result in longer travel times. Express boat lines could decrease these travel times. One express line that we examined was line 6, which serves as an express line for lines 5.1 and 5.2 on the southern end of the historic city between Lido and Piazzale Roma. In the summer, the line skips four stops made by lines 5.1 and 5.2, allowing it to travel faster. However, in the winter the line runs less frequently and only skips one of these stops.

While line 6 travels faster along the southern portion of the historic city, it does not reach the railway station Ferrovia as lines 5.1 and 5.2 do, resulting in there being no express connection between Lido and Ferrovia. We concluded that traveling from Lido to Ferrovia could take 9 fewer minutes if the southern portion of lines 5.1 and 5.2 made the same stops as line 6. The change to lines 5.1 and 5.2 can be seen below in Figure 4, in which the lines skip the stops San Zaccaria, Santo Spirito, Santa Marta, and San Basilio. Figure 5 shows the route that line 6 would take if it made the stops that lines 5.1 and 5.2 currently make between Lido and Piazzale Roma.

Figure 4. Suggested express service to replace ACTV Lines 5.1 and 5.2

Figure 5. Suggested local service to replace ACTV Line 6

By using isochrones, a tool to visualize all the areas that can be accessed from a specific location within a certain amount of time, we can establish the limits of mobility within the historic city. For example, Figure 6 shows a 15 minute isochrone from Lido, created with an isochrone generator that we produced, which includes walking and public transportation. The blocks become lighter in color as the time it takes to get to the point increases.

Figure 6. 15-minute isochrone from Lido Santa Maria Elisabetta (S.M.E.) water bus station..

Innovative Transportation Systems: Venice Subway

Next we examined a large scale change to the transportation system in the historic city: a subway system. Subway systems have been proposed for Venice in the past, and a 2005 proposal was funded but never constructed. In Venice, a subway could be built under the lagoon or canals to avoid existing structures, and only passages to subway stations would affect the fabric of the historic city. Our study shows that a subway would substantially reduce travel times compared to any of the possible improvements to the existing transportation systems.

We examined the travel times from Lido, a major population center in Venice and a possible terminus of the subway system. The potential subway system we analyzed included stops in Lido, in the canal next to San Zaccaria (for access to San Marco), a stop in the Giudecca canal with a pedestrian tunnel between Zattere in Dorsoduro and Palanca in Giudecca, and a major station between Venice’s two main transportation hubs, Piazzale Roma (for buses and trams) and Ferrovia (intercity trains). This route segment, shown below in Figure 7, was the primary route for analysis and part of two possible subway extensions to the mainland, one to the center of Mestre, shown in Figure 8 below, and the other to Marco Polo Airport, the fourth-busiest airport in Italy and the busiest airport in Italy not connected to rail transportation, shown in Figure 9 below.

Figure 7. Route map from Lido to Piazzale Roma

Figure 8. Possible extension of the Lido - Piazzale Roma subway to Mestre

Figure 9. Possible extension of the Lido - Piazzale Roma subway to Marco Polo Airport

We calculated travel times and used isochrones to visualize subway routes with faster mobility. Travel from Lido to Central Mestre decreased from 60 minutes to 15.8 minutes, and from Lido to Marco Polo Airport from 66 minutes to 16.5 minutes. Our isochrone generator could calculate travel times beyond subway stations as if the subway was already a part of Venice’s public transportation system. Also, another tool that we created, a subway route simulator, allows us to visualize how a specific route would change if a subway system was implemented. Figure 10 shows the current route and duration of travel, while Figure 11 shows how the route and duration would change if the above subway system was implemented.

Figure 10. Subway route simulator using current system

Figure 11. Subway route simulator using proposed subway line

We concluded that a subway system in Venice would cost about €201 million per kilometer. Based on this unit cost, we determined that the line from Lido to Piazzale Roma would cost €1.4 billion to construct, the extension from Piazzale Roma to Mestre would cost €1.7 billion, and the extension from Piazzale Roma to Marco Polo Airport would cost €1.5 billion.

Previous subway proposals have not been without controversy. Opponents of the 2005 subway which proposed to connect Marco Polo Airport to Arsenale were concerned that the system would lead to real estate speculation, increase the cost of living, bring more tourists, exacerbate congestion, and fuel a tourism-driven economy. These concerns should be taken seriously, but we believe that reducing travel times for residents also has benefits that should not be underestimated. Decreasing travel times may bring non-tourism business into the city, increase the quality of life for residents, spread the economic vitality across the larger Commune of Venice in Mestre and Lido, and create a 21st-century transportation infrastructure to enable Venice to thrive in the new economy.

Conclusions

Our study compared the benefits of modest changes to existing water bus systems to a new transportation system. For example, traveling between Lido and the railway station takes 43 minutes with the current water bus system using lines 5.1 or 5.2 during the summer. An express water bus service would take 34 minutes to travel between these points. A subway would take 11 minutes for the same journey. The subway system could also improve access to Mestre and Marco Polo Airport, reducing travel times for each destination from Lido by about 75%, but also costing the city up to €4.53 billion. We concluded that while car parking is limited, possible expansions would most likely result in more congestion on the Ponte della Libertá. We were also able to conclude that Venice’s current system for boat parking is being exploited, and we proposed a new system to regulate it that would revolve around a smartphone application. Lastly, we were able to determine suggestions for possible alternative boat parking spots for the historic city.

Through our work on parking and transportation systems within Venice, we have laid the groundwork for several projects. We completed an analysis of car parking, boat parking, express boat lines, and a potential subway system. While our analyses both explored and resulted in many recommendations, our work can be used as a framework for future innovative projects involving the parking and transportation systems in Venice. Our boat parking spot generator, various cost analysis, and isochrone generator are vital tools that we foresee being used when entering the implementation stages of alternate boat parking spots or alternative transportation systems for Venice.