Italy is at a crossroads of infrastructure choices whose effects affect the daily mobility of millions of people. The new Pendolaria Report by Legambiente documents a transportation system marked by chronic underfunding and policy choices that the association calls unbalanced.
Legambiente’s analysis focuses, first and foremost, on the gradual depletion of the National Transport Fund (NTF), the main resource for local rail and road public transport. The resources allocated to this fund, the report explains, will be worth
Sacrificed underground systems
Despite its call for structural refinancing, Legambiente highlights how Budget Law 2026 has taken crucial resources away from crucial metropolitan infrastructure for areas with high mobility demand. The association denounces the defunding of 425 million euros taken away from the Rome’s Metro C (Piazzale Clodio-Farnesina section), the stop to Milan’s M4 extension to Segrate and the Afragola-Naples rail link.
The contrast in spending priorities is one of the most critical points raised by the Report. The association points out that the 15 billion euros earmarked for the Messina Strait Bridge for just over three kilometres is disproportionate to urban needs. Legambiente compares this investment with what has been done for mass transit: with about a third of that amount (5.4 billion euros), about 250 kilometres of new tram lines are being completed in 11 Italian cities.
Giorgio Zampetti, director general of Legambiente, clarified the association’s position: “It is a question of choices, not of available resources, given that we continue, in the meantime, to invest in the Strait of Messina Bridge, despite the critical issues repeatedly highlighted not only by us associations but also by the Court of Auditors.”
The deterioration of service
The effect of these financial choices is directly reflected in the quality of daily service. 185 fewer regional trains ran in 2024 than in the previous year due to divestments that were not offset by sufficient purchases, despite the fact that the overall average age of the train fleet finally dropped to 14.7 years.
Mapping the“Worst Lines in Italy” confirms historical criticalities, but also new emergencies. Amongst the most serious situations are the
A factor of exclusion
The deterioration of the network and public service has a direct social consequence that the Pendolaria Report calls transport poverty. It is a rapidly growing phenomenon that transforms mobility from a right to a factor of social and economic exclusion.
The Report quantifies the impact of this condition on household budgets: in Italy, average transportation spending reaches 10.8 per cent of monthly household budgets, far exceeding the 6 per fcent vulnerability threshold indicated by a European Commission report.
Roberto Scacchi, Legambiente’s National Mobility Manager, points out that “the lack of public transportation is becoming a dramatic factor of social exclusion” and reiterates, “When rail and urban service is inadequately funded, with low frequencies and incomplete infrastructure, getting around becomes more expensive or even impossible for a growing part of the population.”
Worsening the picture is climate risk: from 2010 to 2025,Legambiente’s Climate Cities Observatory surveyed 229 extreme weather events (26 in 2025 alone) that caused disruptions to rail service (landslides, flooding), with the ministry estimating damage on infrastructure and mobility of up to 5 billion euros a year by 2050.
The demands for change
Faced with this scenario, Legambiente makes some demands of the government, insisting that investment in rail and urban mobility is “an environmentally, economically and socially necessary choice.”
The association calls for strengthening the National Transportation Fund, returning it to actual 2009 levels, boosting frequencies from 30 minutes to 4-8 minutes at peak hours, doubling daily trips from 6 million to 12 million by 2035, “stopping the obsession with the Messina Strait Bridge,” and investing in sustainable urban mobility.
The report closes with examples of best practices, such as the success of the Milan-Trento-Bolzano service or the Tuscan project“Ti porta Firenze,” which reduces the cost of public transportation subscriptions by up to 80 per cent.
